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POEMS 



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POEMS 



MY COUNTRY 
WILD EDEN 

THE PLAYERS' ELEGY 

THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
ODES AND . SONNETS 

BY 
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1903 

^il rights reserved 



THE li3Rax.-(V o;-j 

CONGRE7-S, I 



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CLASS ^ XXo 



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Copyright, 1883, 1890, 1893, 
By GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY. 

Copyright, 1899, 1900. i9°3. 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up, electrotyped, and published November, 1903. 



J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

The author has here collected all of his published 
verse, except a fragment, " The Roamer," which he 
reserves in the hope of completing that poem ; and a 
considerable number of pieces, hitherto either uncol- 
lected or unpublished, are also included. The volume 
represents the passing of many years, and begins from 
days almost of boyhood. If the result is less than it 
should have been, there are here some gleanings of 
time from a life never so fortunate as to permit more 
than momentary and incidental cultivation of that art 
which is the chief grace of the intellectual life. The 
author can claim only that he has written no line except 
for itself alone. 

G. E. W. 

Beverly, Massachusetts, 
August 13, 1903. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

My Country and Other Poems: 

At Gibraltar • • 3 

False Dawn e 

Love at the Door . .8 

Taormina ......... lo 

" Italy, like a Dream "....... 13 

Siena .......... 14 

I. The Daisies ....... 14 

II. Christ Scourged 15 

III. The Resurrection 17 

Forebodings ig 

" Be God's the Hope " 20 

Love's Rosary ........ 21 

At the Funeral of William E. Russell .... 22 

On a Portrait of Columbus ...... 23 

My Country ......... 24 

America and England in Danger of War ... 42 

" Will it be so? " 47 

In the Square of St. Peter's 49 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Near Baise 49 

Man : Written at Ravenna 50 

" Nay, Soul " 51 

On the Hundredth Anniversary of the French Revolution 54 
To the Roman Pontiff on the Discipline of Father 

McGlynn 55 

Our First Century 56 

To those who reproved the Author for too Sanguine 

Patriotism 57 

Shelley's House 58 

Wild Eden: 

He ate the Laurel and is Mad 63 

Flower before the Leaf 68 

Wild Eden 70 

The Birth of Love 73 

" When first I saw Her " 74 

The Secret ^ . . 75 

" O, Inexpressible as Sweet " . . . . . .76 

The Sea-shell 77 

The Rose of Stars 79 

The Rose Bower 81 

The Message 83 

The Rose 84 

The Lover 86 

The Weather-spirit 88 

Love's Castaway ........ 89 



CONTENTS IX 

PAGE 

Divine Awe ^ • 9^ 

Wind and Wave 92 

Farewell 93 

The Wanderers 94 

"Now Marble Apennines Shining" . . • • 95 

" I see the Warm Sun Parting " 9^ 

Love Delayed 97 

Love's Confessional 9° 

Going North . . - lOO 

Homeward Bound ^°^ 

The Homestead ^°S 

The Lindens »04 

The Bat ^°5 

The Humming-bird 199 

The Child . 112 

Love's Birthright ^^4 

" From the Young Orchards " "5 

" O, Struck beneath the Laurel " "7 

The Dream Il8 

The Death-rose "I 

The Mighty Mother 122 

Autumn ^26 

So Slow to Die "7 

The Dirge 129 

The Blood-red Blossom 13" 

Seaward. , • • • • '3^ 



X CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Players' Elegy and Other Poems: 

The Players' Elegy on the Death of Edwin Booth : read 
at the Memorial Service in the Madison Square Con- 
cert Hall, New York, November 13, 1893 . . .145 
Ode : read at the Emerson Centenary Service, Boston, 

May 24, 1903 156 

Aubrey de Vere : obiit 1902 167 

Wendell Phillips 167 

Essex Regiment March : written for the Eighth Massa- 
chusetts United States Volunteer Infantry in the 

Spanish War 168 

The Islands of the Sea 171 

Children's Hymn 174 

To a Student , ... 175 

The Rose-giver 175 

To Professor A. V. Williams Jackson . . . .176 
To E. M. O. on her Golden Wedding . . . .181 
Requiem: Thomas Randolph Price . • . .182 

To 1903, Columbia 184 

Exeter Ode : read at the Dedication of Alumni Hall, 
Phillips Exeter Academy, June 17, 1903 . . . 18S 

The North Shore Watch: C. L. D., obiit mdccclxxviii 195 

Agathon 225 



MY COUNTRY AND OTHER 
POEMS 



0t (Sibraltar 



England, I stand on thy imperial ground, 
Not all a stranger ; as thy bugles blow, 
I feel within my blood old battles flow — 
The blood whose ancient founts in thee are found. 
Still surging dark against the Christian bound 
Wide Islam presses ; well its peoples know 
Thy heights that watch them wandering below ; 
I think how Lucknow heard their gathering sound. 
I turn, and meet the cruel, turbaned face. 
England, 'tis sweet to be so much thy son ! 
I feel the conqueror in my blood and race ; 
Last night Trafalgar awed me, and to-day 
Gibraltar wakened ; hark, thy evening gun 
Startles the desert over Africa ! 



AT GIBRALTAR 



^t <f5ibralcar 
II 

Thou art the rock of empire, set mid-seas 
Between the East and West, that God has built ; 
Advance thy Roman borders where thou wilt, 
While run thy armies true with His decrees ; 
Law, justice, liberty — great gifts are these ; 
Watch that they spread where English blood is spilt, 
Lest, mixed and sullied with his country's guilt, 
The soldier's life-stream flow, and Heaven displease I 
Two swords there are : one naked, apt to smite. 
Thy blade of war ; and, battle-storied, one 
Rejoices in the sheath, and hides from light. 
American I am ; would wars were done ! 
Now westward, look, my country bids good-night — 
Peace to the world from ports without a gun 1 



FALSE DAWN 



ifalflfe soaton 

God dreamt a dream ere the morning woke 

Or ever the stars sang out ; 
The glory, although it never broke, 
Filled heaven with a golden shout ; 

And when in the North there's a quiver and beam 
Of mystical lights that heavenward stream, 
The heart of a boy will dream God's dream. 

O Norns, who sit by the pale sea's capes, 

Loosen the wonderful shine ! 
The glamour of God hath a thousand shapes, 
And every one divine. 

Dartle and listen o'er the blue height ; 
Drift and shimmer, flight on flight ; 
The heart of a boy is God's delight, 

O, clamber and weave with the Milky Way 

The Rose in the East that sprang, 
From star to star, with blossom and spray. 

On heaven's gates to hang ! 



FALSE DAWN 

O Vine of the Morning, cling and climb, 

Till the stars like birds in your branches chime ! 

The heart of a boy is God's springtime. 

'Tis Dawn that shadows the glowing roof ! 

'Tis Light with the Dragon strives ! 
Ah, Night's black warp with the rainbow- woof 
The shuttle of Destiny drives. 

They swerve and falter, gather and fly, 
Wane, and shiver, and slip from the sky — 
O Norns, is the heart of a boy God's he ? 

O Childless Ones, would your blind charms 

Might seal our darling's eyes ! 
Dead, with the dead Dawn in his arms, 
In the pale north Light hes. 

Glimmer and glint, O fallen fire ! 

The lights of heaven like ghosts expire j 

The heart of a boy is God's desire. 

O dream God dreamt ere the morning woke 

Or ever the stars sang out ; 
O glory diviner than ever broke, 

Of the false, false dawn the shout ! 



FALSE DAWN 

False dawn, false dawn, false dawn — 
Alas, when God shall wake ! 

False dawn, false dawn, false dawn — 
Alas, our young mistake ! 

False dawn, false dawn, false dawn — 
O heart betrayed, break, break ! 



LOVE AT THE DOOR 



ILoije at tl^e H)oot: 

Waken, love ! the night is dark, 
I cannot wander more ; 

love, how canst thou slumber? 

1 perish at thy door ! 

O, deep as death thy dream, 
Unless thou now awake, 
And from the rain and darkness 
Me to thy bosom take ! 

I lie upon the threshold 
In the pelting outer storm ; 
Yet in my grief-worn body 
Love has his mortal form. 
Open ! a god shall enter 
And on thy eyes shall gaze 
The face of the immortals. 
Thine after many days. 

But if thou wilt not hearken 
And rise and ope the door, 



LOVE AT THE DOOR 

And yield thy lover pity, — 

O, never, nevermore, 

Shalt thou hear the voice divinest 

Nor unto morning win ; 

Dead lies he in thy doorway, 

And thou art dead within ! 



10 TAORMINA 



tETaormina 

Gardens of olive, gardens of almond, gardens of lemon, 
down to the shore, 

Terrace on terrace, lost in the hollow ravines where the 
stony torrents pour ; 

Spurs of the mountain-side thrusting above them rocky 
capes in the quiet air, 

Silvery-green with thorned vegetation, sprawling lobes of 
the prickly pear ; 

High up, the eagle-nest, small Mola's ruin, clinging and 
hanging over the fall ; 

Nobly the lofty, castle-cragged hilltop, famed Taormina, 
looketh o'er all. 

Southward the purple Mediterranean rounds the far- 
shimmering, long-fingered capes ; 

Twenty sea-leagues has the light travelled ere out of azure 
yon headland it shapes ; 

Purple the distance, deep indigo under, save by the beach 
the emerald floor. 

Save just below where, ever emerging, lakes of mother-of- 
pearl drift o'er ; 



TAORMINA II 

Deep purple northward, over the Straits, as far as the 

long Calabrian blue ; 
Front more majestic of sea-mountains nowhere is there 

uplifted the whole earth through. 
Seaward so vast the prospect envelops one-half of the 

world of the wave and the sky ; 
Landward the ribbon of hill-slanted orchards blossoming 

down from the mountains high ; 
Beautiful, mighty ; — yet ever I leave it, lose and forget 

it in yon awful chme, 
iEtna, out of the sea-floor raising slowly its long-skied 

ridge sublime ; 
Heavily snow-capped, girdled with forests, ^tna, the 

bosom of frost and fire, 
Roughened by lava-floods, bossed and sculptured, massive, 

immense, alone, entire ; 
Clear are the hundred white-coped craters sunk in the 

wrinkled winter there ; 
Smoke from the summit cloud-like trailing lessens and 

swells and drags on the air ; 
^tna, the snow, the fire, the forest, lightning and flood 

and ashy gale ; 
Terrible out of thy caverns flowing, the burning heaven, 

the dark hot hail ! 



12 TAORMINA 

^tna, the garden-sweet mother of vineyard, corn-tilth, 

and fruits that hang from the sky ; 
Bee-pastured ^tna ; it charms me, it holds me, it fills 

me — than Hfe is it more nigh ; 
Till into darkness withdrawn, dense darkness ; and far 

below from the deep-set shore 
GHmmers the long white surf, and uprises the old 

Trinacrian roar. 



"ITALY, LIKE A DREAM" 13 



♦♦31tal^» lihe a E>rcam** 

Italy, like a dream, 

Unfolds before my eyes ; 
But another fairer dream 

Behind me lies ; 
Could I turn from the dream that is 

To where that first light flies — 
Could I turn from the dream that was • 

In a dream life dies ! 

One masters the spirit of life 

Through love of life to be ; 
I am not master, O Love, — 

Thou slayest the will in me ! 
Give me the dream that is, — 

Earth like heaven to see ; 
Or grant the dream that was, — 

Love's immortality ! 



14 SIENA 

I 

THE DAISIES 



Once I came to Siena, 

Travelling waywardly ; 
I sought not church nor palace; 

I did not care to see. 
In the little park at Siena, 

Her famous ways untrod, 
I laid me down in the springtime 

Upon the daisied sod. 
New, but not unfamiliar, 

Of my boyhood seemed the scene 
The hillsides of Judaea, 

And Turner's pines between ; 
And tenderly the rugged, 

Volcanic rock- lands bare. 
Warm in the April weather, 

Slept in the melting air. 
'Twas April in the valleys ; 

'Twas April in the sky ; 



SIENA 15 

And from the tufted locusts 

The sweet scent wandered by ; 
But strange to me the sunshine, 

And strange the growing grass ; 
To the branch that cannot blossom 

How cold doth April pass ! 
As lovers, when love is over, 

Remembering seem men dead, 
Down on the warm bright daisies, 

Earth's lover, I laid my head ; 
And whence or why I know not. 

At the touch my eyes were dim. 
And I knew that these were the daisies 

That Keats felt grow o'er him. 



II 



CHRIST SCOURGED 

I SAW in Siena pictures, 

Wandering wearily ; 
I sought not the names of the masters 

Nor the works men care to see ; 
But once in a low-ceiled passage 

I came on a place of gloom, 



1 6 SIENA 



Lit here and there with halos 

Like saints within the room. 
The pure, serene, mild colors 

The early artists used 
Had made my heart grow softer, 

And still on peace I mused. 
Sudden I saw the Sufferer, 

And my frame was clenched with pain ; 
Perchance no throe so noble 

Visits my soul again. 
Mine were the stripes of the scourging ; 

On my thorn-pierced brow blood ran ; 
In my breast the deep compassion 

Breaking the heart for man. 
I drooped with heavy eyelids. 

Till evil should have its will ; 
On my lips was silence gathered ; 

My waiting soul stood still. 
I gazed, nor knew I was gazing ; 

I trembled, and woke to know 
Him whom they worship in heaven 

Still walking on earth below. 
Once have I borne his sorrows 

Beneath the flail of fate ! 



SIENA 17 

Once, in the woe of his passion, 

I felt the soul grow great ! 
I turned from my dead Leader ; 

I passed the silent door ; 
The gray-walled street received me ; 

On peace I mused no more. 

Ill 

THE RESURRECTION 

After days of waiting, 

Rambling still elsewhere, 
I took the narrow causeway, 

Climbed the broad stone stair ; 
Round the angle turning 

With unlifted gaze 
In the high piazza — 

O, the wasted days ! 
There the great cathedral 

Came upon my eyes ; 
Nevermore may marvel 

Bring to me surprise ! 
In the light of heaven 

Builded, heaven's delight, 



1 8 SIENA 

Never sculptured beauty 

Hallowed so my sight ! 
On the silent curbstone 

Long I sat, and gazed, 
With the sainted vision 

Ever more amazed ; 
Rose, and past the curtain 

Trod the pictured floor, 
Read Siena's story, 

Saw her glory's store. 
In the high piazza 

Once again I turned ; 
Clear in heaven's sunlight 

Prophet and angel burned. 
Still, whene'er that vision 

Comes upon my eyes, 
I seem to see triumphant 

The Resurrection rise. 



LOVE'S ROSARY 21 



Sweet names, the rosary of my evening prayer, 

Told on my lips like kisses of good night 

To friends who go a little from my sight, 

And some through distant years shine clear and fair ! 

So this dear burden that I daily bear 

Nightly God taketh, and doth loose me quite ; 

And soft I sink in slumbers pure and light 

With thoughts of human love and heavenly care. 

But when I mark how into shadow sHps 

My manhood's prime, and weep fast-passing friends, 

And heaven's riches making poor my Hps, 

And think how in the dust love's labor ends. 

Then, where the cluster of my hearthstone shone, 

" Bid me not live," I sigh, " till all be gone." 



22 THE FUNERAL OF WILLIAM E. RUSSELL 



0t t^t ifuncral of William CI;* Hu00ell 

Dead ! deaf forever to the people's call, 

The fallen leader ; sorrow clouds the state ; 

The greatest of the land about his pall 

Mourn for the dark reversal of his fate. 

But from our eyes, who cherished him o'er all, 

And in our boyhood with his heart did mate. 

What tears must for this son of Harvard fall 

Who kept our early faith inviolate ! 

Bear him, pale classmates, down the grief-hushed aisle 

Who once through shouting thousands, mile on mile. 

Rode with proud rein, erect, and happy smile ; 

Now bear him, flag-wrapped, down the black defile. 

Out at the door, where azure summer blows, 

To spaces where the light eternal glows, — 

There in the will of God shall he repose : 

We to the work through which the people grows. 



ON A PORTRAIT OF COLUMBUS 23 



0n a :|portrait of Columbusf 

Was this his face, and these the finding eyes 

That plucked a new world from the rolling seas ? 

Who, serving Christ, whom most he sought to please, 

Willed the great vision till he saw arise 

Man's other home and earthly paradise — 

His early thought since first with stalwart knees 

He pushed the boat from his young olive trees, 

And sailed to wrest the secret of the skies ? 

He on the waters dared to set his feet. 

And through believing planted earth's last race. 

What faith in man must in our new world beat, 

Thinking how once he saw before his face 

The west and all the host of stars retreat 

Into the silent infinite of space ! 



24 MY COUNTRY 



^^ Country 

Who saith that song doth fail? 

Or thinks to bound 

Within a little plot of Grecian ground 

The sole of mortal things that can avail ? 

Olympus was but heaven's gate ; 

Not there the strong Light-bringer deigned to wait; 

But westward o'er the rosy height 

His cloud-sprung coursers trample light ; 

And ever westward leans the god above the joyful steeds ; 

The light in his eyes is prophecy; on his hps the words 

are deeds ; 
On whirls the burning Singer; earth wakens where he 

speeds. 
The singing keels that moored great Rome 
Silence o'ertakes ; but his Immortal Song, 
To which the world-wide fates belong, 
Still seeks the fleeing shore and for the gods a home, 
A new Ausonia sings, swells o'er a mightier foam. 
The citadels of Italy — 
O dear to him is Liberty ! — 



MY COUNTRY 25 

Chained not to her marble mountains, 

Sealed not in her broken fountains, 

His bright fire ; 

Up the dark North it leapt, the masterless desire : 

Nor even the Imperial Isle, the Ocean-State, 

Who Time's great order leads, and fastens fate, 

Shall keep his speed across the shouting sea ; 

Destiny exceeds her scope ; 

The hope of man exceeds her hope ; 

The regions of the west unfold ; 

New ages on the god are rolled ; 

The throning years to be. 

Of earth's new men the praise. 

Rise on him where he stands and bends his dreaming 

gaze, 
And smiles to see the shore night vainly shrouds 
Through tracts of ruddy air and darkly gleaming clouds. 

Awake, O Land, and lesser fortunes scorn ! 
Amid the darkness, by the eastern strand, 
Bend down thy ear, and hearken with thy hand ; 
He comes who brings to thee eternal morn ! 
More radiant and fair 
Than ever thy mornings were. 



26 MY COUNTRY 

Or any morn that ever broke from night 

Since the dear star of dawn began his earthly flight ! 

O, whisper to thy clustered isles, 

If any rosy promise round them smiles ; 

O, call to every seaward promontory, 

If one of them, perchance, is made the cape of glory ; 

O, bid the mountains answer thy inquire, 

If any peak be tipped with lonely fire, 

A shining name 

And station of the winged flame 

Above the time's desire ! 

Doubt not, O waiting Land ; for who hath power 

To bar the golden journey of the sun. 

Or on time's dial set back the destined hour ? 

Doubt not, but O, thy heart within prepare. 

And ripen praise upon thy lips with prayer. 

When the bright summons through thy frame shall run 

Of that great day begun ! 

Then heaven shall search thee with its shafts of light. 

And lay thy coverts and thy fastness bare. 

And drag the Serpent from its human lair. 

And on its scales the swords of God shall smite. 

Wielded aloft by spirits that know to fight. 

To find the heart with wounds and not to spare. 



MY COUNTRY 27 

O wilderness untried, 

If thou dost cherish, 

Brought from the old earth's side, 

The beasts that perish, 

The things that eat the dust and darkly crawl, 

And in the heart of nations poison all — 

O, terrible that brightness will appall, 

World-justice hanging o'er thee, and shall fall ! 

Seize thy spear and grasp thy sword ; 

Speak the righteous word ; 

And his battle rolHng o'er thee, 

And his victory flashing round, 

Shall drive the cumbering brood before thee. 

Free forevermore thy ground ; 

Thy great ally. 

Leaning from the sky. 

Shall twine thy hair with morning and the olive's warless 

crown ! 
O Soil befriending men. 
Pluck from the Future's hand her iron pen ; 
While yet his coming lingers, O, stoop down, 
And write upon the threshold of thy earth 
The word that levels all men in their birth, 
And in thy love, and in their spirits' worth ! 



28 MY COUNTRY 

Be that sign, engraved on thee, 
Thy omen and thy destiny ! 

Look forth, O Land, thy mountain tops 

Gutter ; look, the shadow drops ; 

On the warder summits hoary 

Bursts the splendor-voiced story ; 

Round the crags of watching rolled 

The purple vales of heaven unfold. 

And far-shining ridges hang in air — 

Northward beam, and to the south the promise bear ; 

Unto isle and headland sing it, 

O'er the misty Midland fling it, 

From a hundred glorious peaks, the Appalachian gold ! 

O'er the valley of the thousand rivers, 

O'er the sea-horizoned lakes. 

Through heaven's wide gulf the marvellous fire quivers, 

Myriad -winged, and every dwindling star o'ertakes ; 

On where earth's last ranges listen. 

Thunder-peaks that cloud the west 

With the flashing signal waken ; 

All the tameless Rockies own it — 

One great edge of sunrise glisten ; 

All the skied Sierras throne it ; 



MY COUNTRY 29 

And lone Shasta, high uplifted 

O'er the snowy centuries drifted, 

Hears, and through his lands is splendor shaken 

From the morning's jewel in his crest ! 

O chosen Land, 

God's hand 

Doth touch thy spires. 

And lights on all thy hills his rousing fires ! 

O beacon of the nations, lift thy head ; 

Firm be thy bases under ; 

Now thy earth-might with heaven wed 

Beyond hell's hate to sunder ! 

O Land of Promise, whom all eyes 

Have strained through time to see, 

Since poets, cradled in the skies, 

Flashed prophecy on thee ! 

O great Atlantis, other world. 

That never voyager won. 

Though many a shining sail was furled. 

Lost in the setting sun ! 

Joy, joy, joy ! thy destiny hath found thee ! 

Now the oceans brighten round thee, 

To thy heaven-born fate ascending ; 

Thou, earth's darling ! thou, the yearning 



30 



MY COUNTRY 

Of the last hope in her burning, 

Who shall seal her womb forevermore ! 

Child, whose rosy breath is blending 

With the morning's, o'er thee bending, 

While the chorus, never ending. 

Swells from shore to shore — 

Triumph of the peoples, anthem never heard before ! 

Thou, the crowner of the ages, 

Now the eagle seeks thy hand ; 

Poets, statesmen, heroes, sages, 

In the long-drawn portals stand ! 

Well may mount to mount declare thee ; 

Ocean unto ocean sound thee ; 

To the skies loud hymns upbear thee ; 

Earth embrace, and heaven bound thee ; 

God hath found thee ! 

Through the world the tidings pour, 

And fill it o'er and o'er, 

As the wave of morning fills the long Atlantic 

shore ; 
Fills, and brims — O speed the story ! — 
The emerald cup of thy great river-gods ; 
Brims, and through the west down golden sods 
To the Pacific rolls ; flood unto flood speaks glory ! 



MY COUNTRY 31 

O Fair Land, do thy eyes 

Dream paradise? 

Or mortal fields are these, or fallen skies? 

Dost thou not hear Him singing in the gold 

The lofty paean thy long years unfold, 

And joy divine that shines in man's just praise, 

Though yet awhile delays 

The hour full-orbed, and his unclouded blaze? 

Of holy hymns and famous deeds 

He casts before the deathless seeds ; 

He wooes thy dust with rosy rain ; 

Of thy sweet months is he so fain ; 

O, lovelier than the poets told, 

Unwreathes his brow to light thy dying mould ! 

And from their morning bower and from their sunny 

lair. 
Scatters the bloom that springs 
On heavenly pastures fair 
And o'er thy bosom flings 
The fragrance of his own immortal air ! 
Nor flowers alone are his, but every fruit 
That takes the breath of heaven fed from a darkened 

root; 
Joy to thy virgin soil that spring shall thrill and shoot ! 



32 MY COUNTRY 

Like Love, its coming sweet, 

With motions of auroral winds that fleet, 

Shadow and music, o'er the new green wheat ; 

Thy summer lights the land, thy autumn loads the 

sea; 
And still a lovelier year returns to thee ; 
Or where the glowing South is white like wool ; 
Or where the sun-spanned ocean of the maize 
Broods in the brilliant calm, and lightly sways ; 
Or where by inland seas, forever full, 
The golden reservoirs of summer days, 
Towers of abundance stand in all thy ways ; 
Or further on, where bud and fruit together. 
Immortal orchards, star the fadeless weather. 
O generous fertility, 
Like Love, to all men free ! 
And ever rolls an ampler year, and heaven grows ripe in 

thee ! 
For nobler yields than these, 
O favored Land, 

Are whispering with thy breeze — 
The tillage of God's hand ; 
And though it seem thy own, this fair estate 
(Or fief or freehold, ask of Day and Night), 



MY COUNTRY 53 

The Eternal only sows the field of fate, 
And o'er thy will doth exercise His right. 
Thou canst not groove the soil nor turn the sod 
But thou shalt drop therein the seeds of time ; 
Thy labor brings to light the will of God ; 
Fair must the harvest be, and stand sublime ; 
And when the mellowing year is made complete, 
And for the world thou reapest time's increase. 
He thrusts His sickle in the heavy wheat, 
And in thy bursting granaries garners Peace. 

O humbly bow thee down, 

Blessed o'er all thou art ; 

Earth's plenty in thy crown, 

God's Peace within thy heart ! 

Again, O mighty hymn, begin ! 

O mount, Virgilian song ! 

Let be the suffering and the sin ; 

Thy years to Love belong ! 

No Janus-stables on thy soil, nor hoof of Mars's steeds ; 

No ruin smokes ; no war-bolt strikes ; no scar of battle 

bleeds ; 
But fair as once Athene's height thy marble hill shall rise. 
Where Justice reconciles thy earth, Virtue disarms thy skies ! 



34 



MY COUNTRY 



As splendors of the dawn 

Make earthly tapers wan, 

Less than a candle's beam 

The world's first hope shall gleam 

When o'er thy vales and soothed seas the truce of time 

shall stream ! 
Come ! come ! O light divine ! 
O come, Saturnian morn ! 
O Land of Peace on whom recline 
Ten thousand hopes unborn — 
O Beautiful, stand forth, nor sword, nor lance, 
Silent wielder of the fates ! 
War-tamer, striking with thy glance 
The thunder from imperial states ! 
So hard, surpassing war, doth Peace assail ; 
So far, exceeding hate, doth Love avail ; 
Now, married to thy sphere, 
Blessed between the nodding poles shall wheel the earth's 

Great Year. 

O destined Land, unto thy citadel, 
What founding fates even now doth peace compel. 
That through the world thy name is sweet to tell ! 
O throned Freedom, unto thee is brought 



MY COUNTRY 35 

Empire ; nor falsehood nor blood-payment asked ; 

Who never through deceit thy ends hast sought, 

Nor toiling millions for ambition tasked; 

Unlike the fools who build the throne 

On fraud, and wrong, and woe ; 

For man at last will take his own, 

Nor count the overthrow ; 

But far from these is set thy continent. 

Nor fears the Revolution in man's rise ; 

On laws that with the weal of all consent. 

And saving truths that make the people wise : 

For thou art founded in the eternal fact 

That every man doth greaten with the act 

Of freedom ; and doth strengthen with the weight 

Of duty ; and diviner moulds his fate, 

By sharp experience taught the thing he lacked, 

God's pupil ; thy large maxim framed, though late, 

Who masters best himself best serves the State. 

This wisdom is thy Corner : next the stone 

Of Bounty ; thou hast given all ; thy store, 

Free as the air, and broadcast as the light, 

Thou flingest ; and the fair and gracious sight, 

More rich, doth teach thy sons this happy lore : 

That no man lives who takes not priceless gifts 



36 MY COUNTRY 

Both of thy substance and thy laws, whereto 
He may not plead desert, but holds of thee 
A childhood title, shared with all who grew, 
His brethren of the hearth ; whence no man lifts 
Above the common right his claim ; nor dares 
To fence his pastures of the common good ; 
For common are thy fields ; common the toil ; 
Common the charter of prosperity. 
That gives to each that all may blessed be. 
This is the very counsel of thy soil. 
Therefore if any thrive, mean-souled he spares 
The alms he took ; let him not think subdued 
The State's first law, that civic rights are strong 
But while the fruits of all to all belong ; 
Although he heir the fortune of the earth. 
Let him not hoard, nor spend it for his mirth. 
But match his private means with public worth. 
That man in whom the people's riches lie 
Is the great citizen, in his country's eye. 
Justice, the third great base, that shall secure 
To each his earnings, howsoever poor. 
From each his duties, howsoever great. 
She bids the future for the past atone. 
Behold her symbols on the hoary stone — 



MY COUNTRY 37 

The awful scales and that war-hammered beam 

Which whoso thinks to break doth fondly dream, 

Or Czars who tyrannize or mobs that rage ; 

These are her charge, and heaven's eternal law. 

She from old fountains doth new judgment draw, 

Till, word by word, the ancient order swerves 

To the true course more nigh ; in every age 

A little she creates, but more preserves. 

Hope stands the last, a mighty prop of fate. 

These thy foundations are, O firm-set State ! 

And strength is unto thee 

More than this masonry 

Of common thought ; 

Beyond the stars, from the Far City brought. 

Pillar and tower 

Declare the shaping power, 

Massive, severe, sublime, 

Of the stern, righteous time. 

From sire to son bequeathed, thy eldest dower. 

Large-limbed they were, the pioneers, 

Cast in the iron mould that fate reveres ; 

They could not help but frame the fabric well, 

Who squared the stones for heaven's eye to tell ; 

Who knew from eld and taught posterity. 



38 MY COUNTRY 

That the true workman's only he 

Who builds of God's necessity. 

Nor yet hath failed the seed of righteousness ; 

Still doth the work the awe divine confess, 

Conscience within, duty without, express. 

Well may thy sons rejoice thee, O proud Land ; 

No weakling race of mighty loins is thine. 

No spendthrifts of the fathers ; lo, the Arch, 

The loyal keystone glorying o'er the march 

Of millioned peoples freed ! on every hand 

Grows the vast work, and boundless the design. 

So in thy children shall thy empire stand. 

As in her Caesars fell Rome's majesty, 

Q Desolation, be it far from thee ! 

Forgetting sires and sons to whom were given 

The seals of glory and the keys of fate 

From Him, whom well they knew the Rock of State, 

Thy centre ; and on thy doorposts blazed His name 

Whose plaudit is the substance of all fame, 

The sweetness of all hope — forbid it, Heaven ! 



Shrink not, O Land, beneath that holy fear ! 
Thou art not mocked of God ; 



MY COUNTRY 39 

His kingdom is thy conquering sphere, 

His will thy ruling rod ! 

O Harbor of the sea-tossed fates, 

The last great mortal Bound ; 

Cybele, with a hundred States, 

A hundred turrets, crowned ; 

Mother, whose heart divinely holds 

Earth's poor within her breast ; 

World-Shelterer, in whose open folds 

The wandering races rest ; 

Advance, the hour supreme arrives ; 

O'er Ocean's edge the chariot drives ; 

The past is done ; 

Thy orb begun ; 

Upon the forehead of the world to blaze, 

Lighting all times to be with thy own golden days. 



O Land beloved! 

My Country, dear, my own ! 

May the young heart that moved 

For the weak words atone ; 

The mighty lyre not mine, nor the full breath of song ! 

To happier sons shall these belong. 



40 MY COUNTRY 

Yet doth the first and lonely voice 

Of the dark dawn the heart rejoice, 

While still the loud choir sleeps upon the bough ; 

And never greater love salutes thy brow 

Than his, who seeks thee now. 

Alien the sea and salt the foam 

Where'er it bears him from his home ; 

And when he leaps to land, 

A lover treads the strand ; 

Precious is every stone ; 

No little inch of all the broad domain 

But he would stoop to kiss, and end his pain, 

Feeling thy lips make merry with his own ; 

But O, his trembling reed too frail 

To bear thee Time's All- Hail ! 

Faint is my heart, and ebbing with the passion of thy 

praise ! 
The poets come who cannot fail ; 
Happy are they who sing thy perfect days ! 
Happy am I who see the long night ended, 
In the shadows of the age that bore me. 
All the hopes of mankind blending, 
Earth awaking, heaven descending, 
While the new day steadfastly 



MY COUNTRY 41 

Domes the blue deeps over thee ! 
Happy am I who see the Vision splendid 
In the glowing of the dawn before me, 
All the grace of heaven blending, 
Man arising, Christ descending, 
While God's hand in secrecy 
Builds thy bright eternity. 



42 AMERICA AND ENGLAND 

America anD CnglanD m SDangcr of Mar 
I 

Hast thou forgot the breasts that gave us suck, 
And whence our likeness to our fathers came, 
Though from our arms twice stooping with the same 
Great blow that Runnymede and Naseby struck ? 
Out of thy heart the imperial spark we pluck 
Which in our blood is breaking into flame ; 
O, of one honor make not double shame ; 
Give not the English race to fortune's luck ! 
Thy reef of war across our seaboard thrown. 
Fortress and arsenal against us stored — 
Trust not in them ! the awful summons blown, 
High o'er our long sea-blaze and battle poured 
Through all the marches of the open North, 
On arms uplifted thy First-born rides forth. 



AMERICA AND ENGLAND 43 

America and CBngland in SDangcr of ^ar 
II 

Mother of nations, of them eldest we, 

Well is it found, and happy for the state. 

When that which makes men proud first makes them 

great, 
And such our fortune is who sprang from thee. 
And brought to this new land from over sea 
The faith that can with every household mate, 
And freedom whereof law is magistrate, 
And thoughts that make men brave, and leave them free. 
O Mother of our faith, our law, our lore, 
What shall we answer thee if thou shouldst ask 
How this fair birthright doth in us increase? 
There is no home but Christ is at the door ; 
Freely our toiling millions choose Hfe's task; 
Justice we love, and next to justice peace. 



44 AMERICA AND ENGLAND 

America anu CBnglanD in SDanger of 
III 



What is the strength of England, and her pride 
Among the nations, when she makes her boast ? 
Has the East heard it, where her far-flung host 
Hangs like a javelin in India's side ? 
Does the sea know it, where her navies ride, 
Like towers of stars, about the silver coast, 
Or from the great Capes to the uttermost 
Parts of the North like ocean meteors glide? 
Answer, O South, if yet where Gordon sank, 
Spent arrow of the far and lone Soudan, 
There comes a whisper out of wasted death ! 
O every ocean, every land, that drank 
The blood of England, answer, if ye can. 
What is it that giveth her immortal breath? 



AMERICA AND ENGLAND 45 

jamerica anD Cnglanu in 2Panger of Mar 

IV 

Then the West answered : " Is the sword's keen edge 

Like to the mind for sharpness? Doth the flame 

Devour like thought? Many with chariots came, 

Squadron and phalanx, legion, square, and wedge ; 

They mounted up ; they wound from ledge to ledge 

Of battle-glory dark with battle-shame ; 

But God hath hurled them from the heights of fame 

Who from the soul took no eternal pledge. 

Because above her people and her throne 

She hath erected reason's sovereignty ; 

Because wherever human speech is known 

The touch of English breath doth make thought free ; 

Therefore forever is her glory blown 

About the hills, and flashed beneath the sea." 



46 AMERICA AND ENGLAND 

America anti CDnglanu in 2[>anger of WiRX 

V 

First of mankind bid we our eagles pause 

Before the pure tribunal of the mind, 

Where swordless justice shall the sentence find, 

And righteous reason arbitrate the cause ! 

First of mankind, whom yet no power o'erawes, 

One kin let us confederate and bind ; 

Let the great instrument be made and signed, 

The mould and pattern of earth's mightier laws ! 

Crown with this act the thousand years of thought, 

O English Race, and wheresoever roams 

Thy sea- flown brood, and bulwarked states has wrought 

Far as the loneliest wave of ocean foams, 

Thy children's love with veneration brought 

Shall warm thy hearthstone from their million homes. 



"WILL IT BE SO?" 47 



♦♦ mm it be 00 ? '* 

While I remember 
Dost thou forget, 
Where by the home-ember 
I see thee yet? 
Or dost thou miss only 
The friend from thy side, 
While I am lonely 
Life-long for my bride ? 

When we met, when we parted, 
Was it mine, not thy hand, 
That trembled and started 
At love's demand ? 
Mine only the rapture 
Unshared, and the pain 
Till thought could recapture 
Thy presence again? 

Was it all heart's delusion 
When each warm breath. 



48 "WILL IT BE SO?" 

Caught with confusion, 
Told life, told death ? 
Though choked was my story, 
Though scattered my power, 
Wert thou blind to the glory 
Of love's one hour ? 

Wert thou not maiden 
To feel the soul- touch 
Of the spirit love-laden 
That loved too much ? 
If late thou shouldst waken, 
If late thou shouldst know, 
Forgotten, forsaken — 
Will it be so ? 



NEAR BALE 49 



3In tl)e Square of ^u l^tttfa 

How brave with heaven St. Peter's fountain copes, 
And sheds the rainbow round, and silvers all ! 

Man's heart is such a fountain ; so his hopes 
The rainbow shed, and through the rainbow fall. 



O, tender are the gods, and deep their scorn. 
Who write their wisdom on the child's new heart ! 

The temple that saluted them at morn, 
Ruined and bare, silent they let depart. 



50 MAN: WRITTEN AT RAVENNA 



^an : Written at Mabcnna 

A STRANGER to earth's lands, 
A suppliant to her years, 
He claps his childish hands, 
He drops his boyish tears. 
At last life's hope appears ; 
For gold he sifts the sands. 
For truth he charts the spheres. 
Earth takes his shrivelled hands. 
Shuts eyes too old for tears ; 
Earth, weary in all her lands 
And dumb through all her years. 



"NAY, SOUL" SI 



Nay, Soul, so travel-worn. 
Begging from door to door, 
Forever beggared more 
And sickening with self-scorn. 
Art thou so poor, thou born 
Of all the times before ? 

Who heeds thy dumb demands? 
Thy passion or thy fears? 
Though thou hast wet with tears 
Beloved and alien hands. 
Thy want who understands ? 
Thy misery who reveres ? 

Nay, Soul, thy shame forbear ! 
Between the earth and sky 
Was never man could buy 
The bread of Hfe with prayer, 
Not though his brother there 
Saw him with hunger die. 



52 "NAY, SOUL" 

His life a man may give ; 
But not for deepest ruth 
Beauty, nor love, nor truth, 
Whereby himself doth live. 
Come home, poor fugitive ! 
Art thou so poor, forsooth? 

One justice has been done 
To all who draw life's breath ; 
Thee heaven encompasseth, 
And the impartial sun 
Now as in Babylon 
Lights up the way to death. 

Is not the world thy own, 
Whole as in Plato's mind ? 
Know surely thou must find 
Therein thyself alone 
The archetype unknown, 
Or be forever blind. 

Thy past — there may thy eyes, 
As Dante's, well in well, 
Travel the slopes of hell; 



"NAY, SOUL" 53 

There see thy angels rise 
Where, choir in choir, they dwell 
Round God, like folded skies. 

Thy heart — look thou aright ! 
Fear not the wild untrod, 
Nor birth, nor burial sod 1 
Look, and in native light, 
Bare as to Christ's own sight, 
Living shalt thou see God. 

Nay, Soul, what mockery this, 
To have so vainly striven, 
Knocking at earth and heaven 
For largess of the bliss 
That in thy being is, 
And with thy birth was given. 

In thy own self ascend ; 
Cast staff and scrip away ; 
Leave to the dead decay, 
The living to their end ; 
Leave poet, priest, and friend ; 
Thou shalt find peace to-day. 



54 THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY 



<Bn t^t J^unDretitl) ^nntbrrs^ar^ of t^e ifrencl^i 
Ket)olution 

She matched the world in arms against man's right, 
And when the Fates would stay victorious France, 
With her own conquests must they dull her lance, 
And legions worn with fadeless battles smite. 
O laugher at the shocks of time, her might 
Rejoiced in more than arms ! the great advance 
Through Europe of her triple ordinance 
Man owes to her. — O Century, born to-night. 
Fulfil her glory ! Europe still hath slaves. 
Scourged by the Turk, mown by the Scythian car ; 
Siberia, more rich in heroes' graves 
Than the most famous field of glorious war. 
Yet waits ; and by the bloody Cretan waves 
Man suffers hope, and pleads his woe afar. 



TO THE ROMAN PONTIFF 55 



^0 t\)t Homan ^pontiff on t\)t Di^ctplme of 
i?atl)er spc^l^nn 

The German tyrant plays thee for his game ; 
Italy curbs thee ; France gives little rest ; 
And o'er the broad sea dost thou think to tame 
God's young plantation in the virgin West ? 
Three kingdoms did He sift to find the seed, 
And sowed ; then open threw the sea's wide door ; 
And millions came, used but to starve and bleed. 
And built the great republic of the poor. 
Remember Dover Strait that shore from thee^ 
Whole empires, hidden in the banked-up clouds 
Of England's greatness ! Of all lands are we. 
But chiefly northmen ; still their might unshrouds 
The fates ; dream not their children of this sod 
Cease to be freemen when they bow to God ! 



56 OUR FIRST CENTURY 



<Bnt ifir^t Century 

It cannot be that men who are the seed 

Of Washington should miss fame's true applause ; 

Franklin did plan us ; Marshall gave us laws ; 

And slow the broad scroll grew a people's creed — 

Union and Liberty ! then at our need, 

Time's challenge coming, Lincoln gave it pause, 

Upheld the double pillars of the cause, 

And dying left them whole — our crowning deed. 

Such was the fathering race that made all fast, 

Who founded us, and spread from sea to sea 

A thousand leagues the zone of liberty, 

And built for man this refuge from his past, 

Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered ; shamed were we, 

Failing the stature that such sires forecast ! 



TOO SANGUINE PATRIOTISM 57 



tE^o tBl\o&t toljo rrprobrO tlje ^utljor for too 
Sanguine pati:toti0m 

The riches of a nation are her dead 
Whom she hath borne to be her memory 
Against her passing, when that time shall be, 
And in the Caesars' tomb she makes her bed ; 
And oft of such decay in books I've read — 
Carthage or Venice, who had wealth as we ; 
Yet, all too wise for patriots, blame not me ! 
I know a nation's gold is not man's bread. 
But rather from itself the heart infers 
That ached when Lincoln died ! those boyish tears 
Still keep my breast untraitored by its fears ; 
Farragut, Phillips, Grant — I saw them shine, 
Names worthy to have filled old Virgil's line ; 
If I prove false, it is the future errs. 



S8 SHELLEY'S HOUSE 



Thou, last, O Lerice, receive my song : 
Ilex and olive on the gleaming steep 
Gray-green, descend to kiss the brilliant deep 
Beautiful with clear winds ; the golden leap 
Of the far-snowing blue, with horned sweep, 
Pours to yon purple sea-valley asleep, 
Between fair mountains locked ; and noon's high blaze 
Turns to one melting sapphire all light's rays, 
Wherein the wild wind blows, the wild wave strays. 
While ocean from his azure censer sprays 
Each scarlet poppy that the shore embays 
Mid thickets of the rose ; and all day long 
The nightingales are waking, loud and strong. 
Warbling unseen their unremitting song 
Round Shelley's house, lest here I suffer wrong, 
This day that gave me birth, pierced by the prong 
Of absence, misery, loss ; and, lest I weep. 
Color and light and music round me keep 
Life's crystal, and this day of all my days 
To be a temple of the soul upraise, 



SHELLEY'S HOUSE 59 

Where I may breathe and throb and muse, and long 
Brood on the loves that to my bosom throng ; 
And from these splendors of earth, sea, and air, 
Like Uriel issuing from the glorious sphere 
That hides him with great beauty, everywhere 
I feel the might of song that once dwelt here, 
A shadow of loveliness approaching near, 
A fragrance in the unseen atmosphere, 
An intimate presence in the darkness dear ; 
I see, and see not ! O, the sweet, the fair 
Melodious death my sea-borne soul should bear 
With yon blue waters whelmed, to meet him there. 
My poet ! — yet rather life to me belong ! — 
Sing, nightingales, flood the blind world with song ! 



WILD EDEN 



WILD EDEN 
^e ate ttie ilaurel anu is; spaD 

Is it a dream that the world is fair? 

And the voice in my blood's melodious beat, — 

Is it only in dreams heard smooth and fleet? 

Lightly singing, " Somewhere, somewhere. 

There is one who shall make thy whole life sweet, 

Making all beautiful things complete 

With the fairest of things found fair ! " 

I drank at dawn the Muses' breath ; 
In boyhood's blossom and flood 
I bit the laurel ; I know till death 
Its poison will flow in my blood. 
Into my speech a glory slips ; 
A throbbing pains my side ; 
One is the breath of the Muses' lips ; 
One is the laurel — woe betide ! 
All day my perilous pulses keep 
A music sweeter than the spheres ; 
63 



64 WILD EDEN 

All day, all night, heart-high they leap, 

They witch my eyes with hopes and fears. 

I bit the laurel so deep, so deep. 

That every lovely thing appears 

A spirit clad in maidenhood, — 

The glamour flies on Dian's foot, 

And music rushes through the wood. 

So long I ate Apollo's root, 

There shooteth through me, blood and brain, 

A burning bliss, by day, by night, — 

Here — there — her face ! — if love be pain, 

'Tis pain exceeding all delight ! 

For who the laurel-madness hath 

Shall hold the vision-haunted path, 

Searching with song the whole world through, 

Where spreads the green, where rolls the blue. 

A maiden draws me, feet and eyes. 

The way by happy lovers ranged ; 

And, maiden-touched, my sweet youth dies 

To sweeter manhood, maiden-changed. 

Though I be mad, I shall not wake ; 

I shall not fall to common sight ; 

Only the god himself may take 

This music out of my blood, this glory out of my breath, 



HE ATE THE LAUREL AND IS MAD 65 

This lift, this rapture, this singing might, 
And love that outlasts death. 

I shall go singing, blood and brain, 

I shall make music of voice and lyre, 

Triumphs of sorrow, paeans of pain, 

And at every fall shall the song leap higher ; 

Whether through Love victorious made, 

Or in his victories victim-laid. 

Him will I praise, whatever fates are. 

On my lips the flower, in my eyes the star. 

My heart his passion, my soul his flame, — 

Love, our divine and intimate lord, 

Who out of the infinite, all-adored. 

Into the heart of nature came. 

With splendor of ten million suns ; 

And instant back his longing runs 

Through bud and billow, through drift and blaze. 

Through thought, through prayer, the thousand 

ways 
The spirit journeys from despair ; 
He sees all things that they are fair. 
But feels them as the daisied sod, — 
This slumbrous beauty, this light, this room, 



66 WILD EDEN 

The chrysalis and broken tomb 
He cleaveth on his way to God. 

I shall go singing over-seas : 

" The million years of the planet's increase, 

All pangs of death, all cries of birth, 

Are clasped at one by the heart of the earth." 

I shall go singing by tower and town : 
" The thousand cities of men that crown 
Empire slow-rising from horde and clan 
Are clasped at one by the heart of man." 

1 shall go singing by flower and brier : 
" The multitudinous stars of fire, 
And man made infinite under the sod, 
Are clasped at one by the heart of God." 

I shall go singing up ice and snow : 

" Blow soon, dread angel, greatly blow, 

Break up, ye gulfs, beneath, above. 

Peal, time's last music, — ' love, love, love ' ! " 

And wheresoever my feet shall rest, 

The place shall be named of the lovers' guest ; 



HE ATE THE LAUREL AND IS MAD 67 

And where in the night I journey on, 
The place shall be called of the lover gone ; 
My life shall be as a sweet song sung, 
My death as a knell by maidens rung, 
Lightly singing, "Somewhere, somewhere, 
There is one to make thy whole life sweet. 
Making all beautiful things complete 
With the fairest of things found fair ! " 
And before the silence wholly fall. 
Faintly shall soft echoes call, 
Syllabling some heavenly air. 
As if my spirit Hngered there — 
" Found fair — found fair — found fair 1 " 



68 WILD EDEN 

iflotoer before tlje ILeaf 
I 

Flower before the leaf, boy-loved Rhodora, 
Morning-pink along the valley of the birch and inaple ; 
Now the green begins to cling about the silver birches ; 
Burst the maples ; reddens yonder hillside ; 
Sudden as the babbling brook or robin's whistle, 
Spring-swift, thou art come in the old places, 
In the hollow swamp-land, bloom on brake ! 

Flower before the leaf ! 

Ah, once here in the sweet season — 

Flash of blue wings, birds in chorus. 

Ere the violet, ere the wild-rose. 

While the Unden lingered and the elm tree — 

Years ago a boy's heart broke in blossom, 

Flower before the leaf. 

While he wandered down the valley loving you ; 

And above him, and around him, 

Beam and gleam and distant color, 

Waiting, waiting, hung the Spirit 

To rush forth upon the world. 



FLOWER BEFORE THE LEAF 69 

II 

Somewhere in the years of the dawn did I dream that a 

youth all boy-like stands ? — 
And the tender Rhodora's bloom, the first of the year, is 

red in his pure, sweet hands ; 
And in the doorway bending, dark-haired, bright-cheeked, 

a girlish form appears, — 
A word, a smile, a blush, and out of the blue a black 

bird downward steers, — 
And all the spirits rush to his heart, and the fragrant 

world, save her, turns dim. 
The flowering of whose face was the glory of spring 

through the years of the dawn to him ! 



^o WILD EDEN 



^tlD CDen 



There is a garden enclosed 

In the high places, 
But never hath love reposed 

In its bowery spaces ; 
And the cedars there like shadows 

O'er the nioonht champaign stand 

Till light like an angel's hand 
Touches Wild Eden. 

Who told me the name of the garden 

That lieth remote, apart, 
I know not, nor whence was the music 

That sang it into my heart ; 
But just as the loud robin tosses 

His notes from the elm tops high, 
As the violets come in the mosses 

When south winds wake and sigh, 
So on my lips I found it, 

This name that is made my cry. 



WILD EDEN 71 

There, under the stars and the dawns 

Of the virginal valleys, 
White lilies flood the low lawns 

And the rose lights the alleys ; 
But never are heard there the voices 

That sweeten on lovers' lips. 

And the wild bee never sips 
Sweets of Wild Eden. 

But who hath shown me the vision 

Of the roses and HHes in ranks 
I would that I knew, that forever 

To him I might render thanks ; 
For a maiden grows there in her blossom, 

In the place of her maidenhood, 
Nor knows how her virgin bosom 

Is stored with the giving of good, 
For the truth is hidden from her 

That of love is understood. 

No bird with his mate there hovers. 
Nor beside her has trilled or sung ; 

No bird in the dewy covers 
Has built a nest for his young ; 



72 



WILD EDEN 

And over the dark-leaved mountains 
The voice in the laurel sleeps ; 
And the moon broods on the deeps 
Shut in Wild Eden. 

O Love, if thou in thy hiding 

Art he who above me stands, 
If thou givest wings to my spirit, 

If thou art my heart and my hands, — 
Through the morn, through the noon, through the even 

That burns with thy planet of hght, 
Through the moonlit space of heaven, 

Guide thou my flight 
Till, star-like on the dark garden, 

I fall in the night ! 

Fly, song of my bosom, unto it •■ 

Wherever the earth breathes spring ; :•. 

Though a thousand years were to rue it. 

Such a heart beats under thy wing. 
Thou shalt dive, thou shalt soar, thou shalt find it, 

And forever my life be blest, 

Such a heart beats in my breast, — 
Fly to Wild Eden ! 



THE BIRTH OF LOVE 73 



Slie y5in\) of !iotie 

'Tis joy to feel the spirit leap 
Angelic from its childhood sleep, 
Pure as a star, fair as a flower, 
Eager with youth's unblasted power ; 
Where every sense gives soft consent, 
To burst into love's element ; 
To be all touch, all eye, all ear, 
And pass into love's burning sphere. 



74 WILD EDEN 



When first I saw her, at the stroke 
The heart of nature in me spoke ; 
The very landscape smiled more sweet, 
Lit by her eyes, pressed by her feet ; 
She made the stars of heaven more bright 
By sleeping under them at night ; 
And fairer made the flowers of May 
By being lovelier than they. 

O, soft, soft, where the sunshine spread. 
Dark in the grass I laid my head ; 
And let the lights of earth depart 
To find her image in my heart ; 
Then through my being came and went 
Tones of some heavenly instrument, 
As if where its blind motions roll 
This world should wake and be a soul. 



THE SECRET 75 



tETlje Secret 

Nightingales warble about it 

All night under blossom and star ; 
The wild swan is dying without it, 

And the eagle crieth afar ; 
The sun, he doth mount but to find it, 

Searching the green earth o'er ; 
But more doth a man's heart mind it — 

O more, more, more ! 

Over the gray leagues of ocean 

The infinite yearneth alone ; 
The forests with wandering emotion 

The thing they know not intone ; 
Creation arose but to see it, 

A million lamps in the blue ; 
But a lover, he shall be it, 

If one sweet maid is true. 



76 WILD EDEN 



O, INEXPRESSIBLE aS SWCCt, 

Love takes my voice away ; 
I cannot tell thee when we meet 
What most I long to say. 

But hadst thou hearing in thy heart 

To know what beats in mine, 
Then shouldst thou walk, where'er thou art, 

In melodies divine. 

So warbling birds lift higher notes 

Than to our ears belong ; 
The music fills their throbbing throats, 

But silence steals the song. 



THE SEA-SHELL 77 



My love o'erflows with joy divine 

The ocean-girdled hills ; 
And with my breath each blowing pine 

And combing breaker fills ; 
The shadows of my spirit move 

The far, blue coast along, 
Where of wild beauty first I wove 

The rainbow woof of song ; 
On these great beaches of the North 

My voices shoreward roll, 
And when the blessed stars come forth, 

All heaven is made my scroll. 

I take the wings of morn ; I soar 

Above the ocean plain ; 
From fountains of the sun I pour 

My passion's golden rain ; 
And when black tempest heaven shrouds, 

On eastern thunders far 



78 WILD EDEN I 

i 

I show the rainbow in the clouds, ''< 

And give the West her star ; I 

Soft blow the winds o'er fallen showers, 
And, cool with fragrance, sleep 

Lies breathing through the chambered hours ; 
I only wake and weep. 

O mystic Love ! that so can take 

The bright world in thy hands, : 

And its imprisoned spirits make '' 

Murmur at thy commands ; 
As if, in truth, this orb of law 

Were but thy reed-hung nest. 
Woven by Time of sticks and straw 

To house the summer guest ; 
And so to me the starry sphere 

Is but love's frail sea-shell; 
O, might she press it to her ear, 

What would its murmurs tell ! 



THE ROSE OF STARS 79 



tE^lje Hoflfe of ^tars? 

When Love, our great Immortal, 

Put on mortality, 
And down from Eden's portal 

Brought this sweet life to be, 
At the sublime archangel 

He laughed with veiled eyes, 
For he bore within his bosom 

The seed of Paradise. 

He hid it in his bosom, 

And there such warmth it found. 
It brake in bud and blossom, 

And the rose fell on the ground ; 
As the green light on the prairie. 

As the red light on the sea, 
Through fragrant belts of summer 

Came this sweet life to be. 

And the grave archangel seeing 
Spread his mighty wings for flight. 



8o WILD EDEN 

But the glow hung round him fleeing 
Like the rose of an Arctic night ; 

And sadly moving heavenward 
By Venus and by Mars, 

He heard the joyful planets 
Hail Earth, the Rose of Stars. 



THE ROSE BOWER 



XI^\)t Hosfe Botoer 

A CRIMSON bower the garden glows, 

In overhanging noon, intense and bare. 

Enisled and bathed in silence and repose, 

As it were mirrored on the azure air ; 

All molten hes the faint blue-shimmering deep, 

Impalpably transparent, smooth with light ; 

Far in the fragrant pines the hot winds sleep ; 

And nothing moves, and all dark things are bright. 

Yet is this fair round of tranquillity, 

This swathe of color, wheresoe'er it be, 

The burning shell of elemental strife ; 

And never yet so fleeting seemed sweet life ; 

So fragile this thin film of human eyes. 

In whose slight orb are springtime and sunrise ; 

So perishable this incandescent frame. 

Lone Nature's inextinguishable pyre 

Of transitory loveliness and bliss, — 

This undulating and eternal flame 

Of beauty burning in its perfumed fire. 

And passion dying in its tropic kiss. 



82 WILD EDEN 

Even now the sweet-hued vision sinks away, 
And from these bathing flames of night and day, 
As in my hour to come it soon may seem 
When fades to ashes earth's majestic dream, 
My soul springs up erect, alone, supreme. 
And, passing from this glory, doth survey, 
As some spent meteor's low and dying gleam, 
This radiant life that burns all else away. 
Consuming its own star ; a moment, where 
About my feet morning and evening flare. 
My spirit gazes, still a stranger there. 
On this dear human home, so sweet, so fair, 
Nor yet unfolds aloft eternal wings. 
Then slowly lapsing into sensuous things, 
Once more do I inhale this glorious light, 
Breathe the soft air and feel the flowering earth, 
And on me comes the everlasting sea. 
Purple horizons, emerald-hanging woods. 
The rose bower, and love's blissful solitudes, 
Where voices of eternity 
Have wandered from my birth. 
And nothing save love's mystery 
Shines with immortal worth. 



THE MESSAGE §3 



So fair the world about me lies. 
So pure is heaven above, 
Ere so much beauty dies 
I would give a gift to my love ; 
Now, ere the long day close, 
That has been so full of bliss, 
I will send to my love the rose. 
In its leaves I will shut a kiss ; 
A rose in the night to perish, 
A kis§ through Ufe to cherish ; 
Now, ere the night-wind blows, 
I will send unto her the rose. 



84 WILD EDEN 



love's star over Eden, 
How pale and faint thou art ! 

Now lost, now seen above, 
Thy white rays point and dart. 

O, Hquid o'er her move. 

Shine out and take my part ! 

1 have sent her the rose of love. 

And shut in the rose is my heart. 

The fireflies glitter and rush 

In the dark of the summer mead ; 
Pale on the hawthorn bush, 

Bright on the larkspur seed ; 
And long is heaven aflush 

To give my rose god-speed ; 
If she breathe a kiss, it will blush ; 

If she bruise a leaf, it will bleed. 

O bright star over Eden, 
All beautiful thou art ; 



THE ROSE 85 

To-day, in the rose, the rose, 

For my love I have perilled my heart ; 
Now, ere the dying glows 

From the placid isles depart. 
The rose-bathed planet knows 

It is hers, my rose, my heart ! 



86 WILD EDEN 



tE^t ILober 

Come down, my love, from Eden, 

For there all things decay, 
Since in his youthful bosom 

Love bore the seed away ; 
Now leave the loveless garden, 

And I will be thy guide 
To that world where thy lover 

Shall never leave thy side. 

Come, love ; in that new country 

The rose shall be thy part, 
And many a darling blossom 

Shall press against thy heart ; 
In a lily whiter, sweeter 

Love shall treasure up thy gold ; 
Lily and rose together 

Thou to thy breast shalt fold. 

Come, love ; my heart is burning 
To reach unto thy hand ; 



THE LOVER 87 

Come, love ; my soul is yearning 

For that mystical new land ; 
Now where thy eyes are bending 

Mayst thou thy lover see 
Midway the height ascending 

That leadeth up to thee. 



88 WILD EDEN 



A VOICE in the roaring pine wood, 
A voice in the breaking sea, 

A voice in the storm-red morning. 
That will not let me be. 

It is calling me to the forest, 
It is calling me to the strand, 

The Weather-spirit is calling me 
To fare over sea and land. 

Till my cheek with the rain is stinging, 
And my hand is wet with the spray. 

There is that within my bosom 
Which will not let me stay. 

Might in the pine wood tossing, 

Might on the racing sea, 
The Weather-spirit, my brother. 

Is calling, calling, to me. 



LOVE'S CASTAWAY 89 



On isle and crag the wild-rose blooms 

Above the purple wave ; 
Its lonely beauty lights the glooms 

Of many a sailor-grave. 
Sad thought ! but oft the ocean-strain. 

That wanders in my blood, 
Works in the meditative brain 

Some wild mysterious mood ; 
I leave the summer's pine-soft track ; 

From all of earth I flee ; 
And on dark tides my soul turns back 

And draweth out to sea ; 
And oft this flower of wilding song, 

That on the gray crag grew, 
Amid the sea-winds safe from wrong, 

And fed with rain and dew, 
Seems but the wild-rose of the rock 

That brightens day by day. 
And there outlives the tempest's shock 

To mourn the castaway. 



90 WILD EDEN 

Ah, if where then the blue sea grieves 

I he beneath the rose, 
My love will live in its lone leaves 

After a thousand snows ; 
And every crag that sees it blush 

Will with my love-note ring. 
While every bird within the bush 

Pours this immortal spring ; 
And each brown league of this salt spray 

Shall lift my shrill sea-cry, 
Where here above love's castaway 

The ocean billows lie. 



DIVINE AWE 91 



To tremble, when I touch her hands, 
With awe that no man understands ; 
To feel soft reverence arise 
When, lover-sweet, I meet her eyes ; 
To see her beauty grow and shine 
When most I feel this awe divine, — 
Whate'er befall me, this is mine ; 
And where about the room she moves. 
My spirit follows her, and loves. 



92 WILD EDEN 



Mint) antj Mabe 

Why wilt thou make, O Wave, 

Forever in from the bay ? 
Dost thou seek on the beaches' grave 

To cast thy Hfe away ? 

Why wilt thou blow, O Wind, 

Forever out to sea? 
Is it death thou, too, wouldst find, 

O winged eternity? 

I told my love unsped 

To both in the eventide ; 
The wild Wind moaned, and fled ; 

The wild Wave sobbed, and died. 



FAREWELL 93 



O SNOW-WHITE birds aye calling me, 
And must I say farewell ; 

And past the coasts of mystery 
Follow the dark sea-swell ? 

This shore was all the world to me ; 

And if I say farewell, 
Its vague and murmuring minstrelsy 

Shall house in my Sea-shell. 

And thou, Sea-rose, forget not me, 
Though now I say farewell ; 

And where I lie, afar from thee. 
To those who love me tell. 

But, O Wild Eden, not to thee, 

O, not to thee farewell ; 
Nor can the heart of Italy 

Vie with thy maiden-spell ! 



94 WILD EDEN { 



The ocean, storming on the rocks, 
Shepherds not there his wild, wet flocks ; 
The soaring ether nowhere finds 
An eyrie for the winged winds ; 
Nor has yon ghttering sky a charm 
To hive in heaven the starry swarm ; 
And so thy wandering thoughts, my heart, 
No home shall find ; let them depart ! 



"NOW MARBLE APENNINES SHINING" 95 



♦<j]5oto garble ^penmnes; ^Ijining 

Now marble Apennines shining 

Should breathe my spirit bare ; 
My heart should cease repining 

In the rainbow-haunted air ; 
But cureless sorrow carries 

My heart beyond the sea, 
Nor comfort in it tarries 

Save thoughts of thee. 

The branch of olive shaken 

Silvers the azure sea ; 
Winds in the ilex waken ; 

O, wert thou here with me, 
Gray olive, dark ilex, bright ocean, 

The radiant mountains round, 
Never for love's devotion 

Were sweeter lodging found ! 



96 WILD EDEN 



♦♦31 ste tl^e mntm ^tm parting** 

I SEE the warm sun parting 

From all sweet things that be ; 
The orange now regrets him, 

With the rose in company ; 
And faintly flushing darkens 

The blossomed almond tree ; 
In every kiss he taketh 

I seem to part from thee. 

Dark lifts the palm tree yonder 

Its sharp spines on the west. 
O doth the birch now waken 

And whisper of thy guest? 
O white birch, when stars cover 

The bird within thy nest. 
Dost thou sigh near her bosom 

The longing of my breast ? 



LOVE DELAYED g; 



ilobe 2r>rla^eD 

The star that most is mine once did I see ; 

No cloud there was ; only the reddened air 

Bloomed round it where it smiled, all bright and fair ; 

Then most of all love seemed divine to me. 

So pure it shone I could but think of thee ; 

So rosily enclasped, yet more must dare ; 

"So dost thou shine, my love," nor could forbear, 

"So soft my passion folds thy purity ! " 

But now I see the western star all gold 

Hang o'er the high and gloomy Apennine ; 

And there I read my lot more truly told — 

The night, the penance, the far journey mine ! 

Still be thou bright ! — My heart, all dark and cold. 

Suffers no light save what from thee doth shine. 



98 WILD EDEN 



jLobe's; Confesfflfional 

Only the lily shall shrive me 

Of my passion and my pain ; 
Only the rose shall revive me 
From death unto life again. 
O lily, white to see, 
O rose of mystery, 
Hear me confess ! 

I was a lover from birth, — 

Flower of the earth ! 
Love's thoughts were mine from a boy, - 

Flower of love's joy ! 
Love's words were mine through youth, - 

Flower of love's truth ! 
Love's deeds were mine, man-grown, — 

Flower of love's throne ! 
Thoughts, words, deeds, were his, — 

Flower of one bliss ! 

I was a lover from birth, — 
Flower of the earth ! 



LOVE'S CONFESSIONAL 99 

My thoughts were love's from a boy, — 

Desire, not joy ! 
My words were love's through youth, — 

Prayer, not truth ! 
My deeds were love's, man-grown, — 

Defeat, not his throne ! 
Thoughts, words, deeds, were his, — 

Pain, not bliss ! 

From my thoughts in which love sighs, 
From my words in which love cries, 
From my deeds in which love dies, 

White lily, shrive me ! 
With love's thoughts wherefrom joy springs, 
With love's words wherein truth sings. 
With love's deeds wherewith heaven rings, 

My rose, revive me ! 



Cofc. 



WILD EDEN 

Ice-gorge and mountain snow, 

And ere my steps depart. 
The avalanche will leap and go 

Into the glacier's heart. 

Ice-cave and rainbow- quiver, 

And blue from the glacier's mouth 

The rushing river, with chill and shiver, 
Glides into the warmed South. 

The sun-tide sets to furthest North, 

And ere my steps arrive, 
The fields aflood, and the willow forth. 

And the thawed bees leave the hive. 

Spring, with the almond-blossom wing 

Brushing the Alpine snows, 
Wing and wing, fly with me. Spring, 

Till the Arctic be all one rose ; 

And all that is cold and frozen be gone. 
And the icebergs melt in the sea ; 

Till the blushing maid be kissed and won, 
And her cold heart melt in me ! 



HOMEWARD BOUND 



Into the west of the waters on the living ocean's foam, 
Into the west of the sunset where the young adventurers 

roam, 
Into the west of the shining star, I am saiUng, saihng 

home; 
Home from the lonely cities, time's wreck, and the naked 

woe, 
Home through the clean great waters where freemen's 

pennants blow, 
Home to the land men dream of, where all the nations 

go; 

'Tis home but to be on the waters, 'tis home already 

here. 
Through the weird red-billowing sunset into the west to 

steer, 
To fall to sleep in the rocking dark with home a day more 

near. 



I02 WILD EDEN 

By morning light the ship holds on, alive with happy 

freight, 
A thousand hearts with one still joy, and with one hope 

elate. 
To reach the land that mothered them and sweetly guides 

their fate ; 
Whether the purple furrow heaps the bows with dazzling 

spray. 
Or buried in green-based masses they dip the storm-swept 

day. 
Or the white fog ribbons o'er them, the strong ship holds 

her way ; 
And when another day is done, by the star of love we 

steer 
To the land of all that we love best and all that we hold 

dear; 
We are saiUng westward, homeward ; our western home 

is near. 



THE HOMESTEAD 103 

In the high field I used to know 
Where earliest the violets grow, 
I found three, faithful to the rock, 
The firstlings of the azure flock. 

The sun-warmed ground, the soft salt air, 
Seemed still of boyhood lingering there; 
The sea-blown homestead of my race, — 
What feehngs filled the sacred place ! 

I found in tears 'tis memory gives 
The immortal part by which man lives ; 
And every flower I ponder on 
Grows in a world of beauty gone. 

Full many a spring of buried bloom 
From these faint violets sheds perfume ; 
And all the summers of the sun 
My love remembers, shine as one. 

Ye hills, ye woods my boyhood knew, 
Be now my manhood dear to you ! 
And fairer may I ye behold 
Year after year, as I grow old. 



I04 WILD EDEN 



^Ije iLinOens! 

Bees in the lindens booming 

In the green core, out of sight, 
In the Hndens, yellow-blooming, 

Embosomed close as night ; 
And nought is there to see 

Save the mellow emerald's bright 
Deep-foHaged lucidity 

Of music, bloom, and light. 

Bees in the Hndens humming 

Melody three days old, 
" Midsummer coming, coming, 

Autumn, and winter, the cold ! " 
The green core ringing is, 

Rings the tiny blossomed gold, 
The lindens ring with bliss 

In three days told. 



THE BAT los 



tEl^e IBat 

One rich hollyhock warden, 
High in the midsummer garden, 
Motionless points its blossoming spear 
Up to the honey-pale, amber-clear 
Dome of the golden atmosphere, 
Shut aloft by the foliage -wall, 
Linden, rock-maple, elms over all. 
Embowering, umbrageous, massive, tall, 
That make of the garden a little dell, 
A place of slumber for blade and bell, — 
Of sleep and circumambient peace, 
From the crimson hollyhock's flowered spire 
To the one deep rose-plume drifting fire, 
Where, duskily seen as the shades increase, 
'Mid molten flakes of breaking fleece, 
And trellised with many a fading spark, 
Through her summer-lattice peers the dark. 

Midsummer now, and the black bat come 
Who makes of the garden his dim night-home ; 



[o6 WILD EDEN 

Familiar to me from boyhood's year 

That gave me mated first-love, first-fear ; 

And before the wings of darkness seize 

The blackening boughs, he is flitting there, 

Lightly silhouetting the air, 

In the hollow gulf of the trees ; , 

Swooping, careening, never alight, 

Swerving, turning, in involute flight. 

High and far on the elm's black edge, 

Low in the clefts of the evergreen hedge ; 

Never long come, never quite gone, 

With poise and waver he circles on, 

Darts and doubles and disappears. 

And blurs on the eaves with gyres and veers ; 

And ever I watch with charmed eyes 

The noiseless shadow where it flies. 

The strange lone guest of the branched gloom. 

Weaving over the garden in bloom 

In the silence and darkness of the night 

His great gray loops of flight. 

O'er summers many the flower-mould lies, 
Since first, with night-awakened eyes, 
I hunt the dark where the shadow flies ; 



THE BAT 107 

Midsummers many the woven charm, 

Weirdly weaving, wrought in me 

Phantoms of fore-felt misery ; 

Now many a year and many a grief 

Lie buried under the yellow leaf; 

And the garden now were scarce the same 

Unless the friendless creature came, 

My shadow-playmate of long past time, 

Where lonesome thought and darksome hour 

Hung over the midsummer in flower, 

Ere the sun-tide ebbed from the northern clime, 

And the chill of the year made into the bower. 

Dark comrade of the vanished prime, 

Dark omen of misfortune near, 

The past, the future, dark appear 

Beneath his ever-falling rings. 

But O, may never come hurt nor harm 

To the least little tender film of his hunch-back 



wmgs 



Something to me the black bat brings 
I should miss were he never to come again, 
The prisoner of this nighted frame ; 
Nor how were life without death dear, 
Earth without sorrow, love without pain. 



io8 WILD EDEN 

And scarce this human heart the same 
Unvisited by fear. 

Midnight now, and my song-in-bloom, 
Like the night-hid hollyhock, lifts its spear 
From the master-soul, past beauty, past gloom, 
To the midsummer midnight majestic, clear, — 
And the far roll of the sea I hear ; 
And the black bat flits a mote obscure 
In the song where star and sea endure. 

O black bat, what were thy omen true? — 
My day hath the garden, my night hath you. 



THE HUMMING-BIRD 109 



tE^^e l^umminSibirD 



Bird in the flower, 

Blossom-spirit, 

Whose tiny power 

Doth the rainbow inherit, 

A breathless minute 

Flower-like in it 

Hang in the flower. 

Ruby-throat rover 
Of noon's blue hour, 
Making music so sphere-like 
Only silence can hear it. 
Sung to the flower ; 
Faery resonance clear, like 
The garden's bell- tower 
Heard through the bower. 

Larkspur-lover, 
Deep in the flower. 



no WILD EDEN 

With secret blisses, 
Aerial kisses, 
Over and over ; 
Swift goer, swift comer, 
Heart of the summer 
A-wing on the flower. 



Could heart discover 
Thy love-fast power. 
So near to hover. 
So close to love her, 
Deep in the flower, 
With hid blisses 
And silent kisses, 
O, it were heaven 
To be such a lover ! 



How should she fear it, 
The rainbow spirit. 
Nor love to be near it, 
Flower-like immure it, 
Love in life's flower ; 
Feed it and lure it, 



THE HUMMING-BIRD 

The ruby rover, 
One golden hour, 
And over and over, 
Home to her bower ! 

Love, the song- spirit. 
Alone to hear it 
There in her bower ; 
Bright-bodied above her. 
Hark, the true lover ! 
What passion he sings, 
The sphere's own music 
From the heartstrings ! — 
Art thou gone, swift wings. 
The bird from the flower? 



WILD EDEN 



It was only the clinging touch 

Of a child's hand in the street, 

But it made the whole day sweet ; 

Caught, as he ran full-speed, 

In my own stretched out to his need, 

Caught, and saved from the fall, 

As I held, for the moment's poise, 

In my circling arms the whole boy's 

Delicate slightness, warmed mould ; 

Mine, for an instant mine, 

The sweetest thing the heart can divine. 

More precious than fame or gold, 

The crown of many joys. 

Lay in my breast, all mine. 

I was nothing to him ; 

He neither looked up nor spoke ; 

I never saw his eyes ; 

He was gone ere my mind awoke 



THE CHILD 

From the action's quick surprise 
With vision blurred and dim. 

You say I ask too much : 

It was only the clinging touch 

Of a child in a city street ; 

It hath made the whole day sweet. 



"3 



114 WILD EDEN 



ilotje'sf 115irtl)nsl)t 

To take the life, and stay the stream thereof; 

To be the flower but not the seed of love ; 

The voice, but not the heaven-homing song ; 

The instrument, but not what doth belong 

Unto the instrument as song to breath, 

Its utterance of the chords of life and death, 

The music born of it, its own soul-birth, — 

This is to make thy body bankrupt earth, 

And in thy soul annul the law divine, 

For in the blood-tie love doth holiest shine ; 

And life from life, to give and to receive, 

For mortals is love's true prerogative ; 

His sacred power lies there ; thence flows his grace, 

Diffused and deathless in a dying race. 

And ever building, out of touch and sight, 

The immortal world, with all we worship bright ; 

O, ponder this, before death to thee come, 

And childless eld, — no hand to lead thee home. 



"FROM THE YOUNG ORCHARDS" 115 



From the young orchards, thick with rosy spray, 
Falls in the windless night the wreath of May ; 
And the young maples, fresh with early gold. 
In one slow moon their emerald globes unfold ; 
So grows, through happy change, the tree of life. 

The arbutus unto the violet yields ; 

Soon the wild daisies flood the fluttering fields ; 

And last the cardinal and the golden-rod 

Lift to the blue the soft fire of the sod ; 

So moves, from bloom to bloom, the flower of love. 

O, hidden-strange as on dew-heavy lawns 

The warm dark scents of summer-fragrant dawns ; 

O, tender as the faint sea-changes are, 

When grows the flush and pales the snow-white star ; 

So strange, so tender, to a maid is love. 

O, calling as the touch of children's hands. 

That draw all wanderers home o'er seas and lands ; 



ii6 WILD EDEN 

O, answering far as from the world divine, 

Whence unseen hands through Time and Space touch 

mine; 
So in my breast I hear the voice of love. 

The Eden-heart of this majestic frame, 
God's will on earth, and flame within the flame 
Far as yon suns in Nature's mystic dusks, 
Deep as the life whereof our lives are husks — 
Unspeakable, O love, my love, is love. 



"O, STRUCK BENEATH THE LAUREL" 117 



♦♦ <2^, ^trucfe bmeat^ t\)t ilatirrl ** 

O, STRUCK beneath the laurel, where the singing fountains 

are, 
I saw from heaven falling the star of love afar ; 
O, slain in Eden's bower nigh the bourn where lovers 

rest, 
I fell upon the arrow that was buried in my breast ; 
Farewell the noble labor, farewell the silent pain, 
Farewell the perfect honor of the long years lived in vain ; 
I lie upon the moorland where the wood and pasture 

meet. 
And the cords that no man breaketh are bound about my 

feet. 



ii8 WILD EDEN 



^1)0 SDrcam 

Was it April I heard sighing, 
Was it May I heard replying, 
In the time when love lay dying, 
True love, so slow to die ? 

Was it April I saw mingling 
With the sea-fog, white and chill, 
Leave the ruddy maples tingling, 
And the green mist on the hill ; 
Come fire-shod through the furrow, 
And fleeting through the boughs. 
While many a golden morrow 
Streamed backward from her brows? 
Did I hear her breathing nigh 
Where the wet, bright grasses grow 
And the oriole passes by, 
In moist places, warm and low. 
Till I dreamed the dream before me 
In the dreaming of the year. 



THE DREAM 119 

And I dreamed her breath stole o'er me, 
Sighing low, " Would May were here ! " 

Swelled the bud and closed the furrow; 
Shadier night and ampler day ; 
April, sorrow unto sorrow, 
Gave me unto mourning May; 
Like a spirit, bending o'er me, 
Woman seemed she, eve and mom, 
Light in darkness, May that bore me 
Watched the child that she had borne ; 
Soothed me with dim hands of healing, 
Sleeping, till I dreamed again 
Balmier daybreaks rosier stealing 
On the heaving ocean-plain. 
Past the tide-ways of the islands 
To the dreamy-cadenced foam. 
And the large out-looking highlands. 
Pines and pastures of my home ; 
There beside me, parting never. 
Over earth and sea and skies 
Lights of beauty blown forever 
Flamed and faded with my eyes ; 
Faint the music o'er my bosom — 



I20 WILD EDEN 

" Sleep and dream, sleep and dream ; 
Waken, bud, and waken, blossom ; 
Feed him, lead him, flower and gleam ! 
And at last, like music broken 
With a great cry, came the light, 
Loosed in tears my woe unspoken. 
Lived, and brought the starless night. 



THE DEATH-ROSE 



My pulses tremble and start, 

And flame in my throbbing heart; 

And I would that the ocean-wind might arise 

And blow the flying scud through the skies ; 

And I long for the spirit of cold 

About my fever to flash and fold, — 

And far away I see uplift, 

Through the waver of thought and memory's drift, 

Nevada peaks, where the heavenly rose 

Sleeps in the bosom of summer snows : 

Summer snows in their bosom lie, 

And out of the heart of the tender sky. 

Where all day long the lone sun rolled. 

Blooms the death-rose in a mist of gold ; 

And with sudden pallor the faint flush goes. 

And leaves the peaks to their white repose. 



122 WILD EDEN 



O Mother, Mighty Mother, thou who bearest 
The children of illusion and desire, 
Lovers of all that to the heart is fairest, 
Know'st thou not me, who now thine aid require, 
And over all thy brood did most aspire 
To love and to be loved ? whom late thou gavest 
To moulding time beside the sounding deep. 
Bosomed with that wild passion which thou cravest, 
And peril in my blood to dance and leap 
And in my heart perpetual spring to keep ; 
But O, what kindless storm and winter woe 
Have laid the violets of the year asleep, 
And bade my bursting blossoms never blow ! 

Am I not thine, O Mother? bend low, bend low ! 

' ' I 

I 
O Mighty Mother, who with dark hands dippest j 

Thy children in this living glory's tide, i 

And in their infant gaze creation clippest | 

Blue-orbed in their young spirits azure-eyed. 

And openest for their feet far-off the wide j 



THE MIGHTY MOTHER 123 

Light-gateways ! thou who hast the mighty magic 
And layest thy sons in nature's foster-breast, 
Where from the wells of being they drain the tragic 
Nurture of spirits greatening o'er the rest, 
And do themselves with that same power invest 
With which the lone sun flames and blue seas roll, 
Which stretches out the day from east to west. 
And sows the vivid heavens from pole to pole, — 
New wielders of the universal soul ! 

O Mother, who with hands of splendor blindest 

The naked vision which thy sons adore, 

And o'er them, face and hair and forehead, bindest 

The mortal veil the sacred poets wore, 

Bringing it forth from fame's eternal store ; 

And windest round them with sweet-toned measures 

Its wandering woof of winds and waters wove. 

The poets' flowery joys and starry pleasures. 

The marvel of the dreaming soul of love, — 

And heaven and earth in its enchantment move ; 

Then see they spirits walking in the sky. 

And mates of glory go the way they rove ; 

Across the world they see a great beam lie ; 

Nor deem it life to live, nor death to die. 



124 WILD EDEN 

If this were life, thou wouldst not hear me crying ; 
If this were death, my mouth were stopt with dust j 

Mighty Mother, far beyond replying, 

Gone is the power that made me great in trust ; 

1 only cry aloud because I must, 

For whom in heaven sang every star my brother, 
Sang every flower on earth in tune with me, 
And light and sound, each sweeter than the other. 
About my thoughts washed music like a sea, 
Where long I voyaged with my minstrelsy ; 
They friend not now ; nor see I, night nor day, 
The landscape glorified with cloud or tree ; 
But waves of shadow through my senses play ; 
Along dark tides my spirit swoons away. 

O, leave me not to drift through this blue being 
Borne darkly as the dark wave bears the foam. 
Sinking away, past touch, past sound, past seeing. 
And further from divinest love to roam ! 
Not thus thou bringest the fair life-lovers home ! 
But rather past celestial skies that brighten 
To the far shining of the heavenly rose, 
Past congregated stars that blaze and lighten 
Unto the Sun unseen whence all light flows. 



so SLOW TO DIE 127 



^0 ^loiD to SDie 

The rainbow on the ocean 

A moment bright, 
The nightingale's devotion 

That dies on night, 
Eve's rosy star a-tremble 

Its hour of hght, — 
All things that love resemble 

Too soon take flight. 

The violets we cherish 

Died in the spring ; 
Roses and lilies perish 

In what they bring ; 
And joy and beauty wholly 

With life depart ; 
But love leaves slow, how slowly ! 

Life's empty heart. 



128 WILD EDEN 

O, strange to me, and wondrous, 

The storm passed by, 
With sound of voices thundrous 

Swept from the sky ; 
But stranger, love, thy fashion, — 

O, tell me why 
Art thou, dark storm of passion. 

So slow to die? 

As roll the billowy ridges 

When the great gale has blown o'er ; 
As the long winter-dirges 

From frozen branches pour ; 
As the whole sea's harsh December 

Pounds on the pine-hung shore ; 
So will love's deep remember, 

So will deep love deplore. 



THE DIRGE 129 



Z\)t SDtrge 

I HAVE been where the white lilies blow 

That no heart ponders ; 
I have been where the rose-thickets grow, 

And love never wanders ; 
Where the laurel-branch unbroken 

Forgets the songful strife ; 
I have found this Death-in-life ; 

'Tis in Wild Eden ! 

There over the low lilied lawns, 

Down rose-leaf alleys. 
She moves under silent dawns 

Through songless valleys ; 
Cold rose and snow-cold lilies 

Shall for the maid be strewn, 
Nor laurel for her moan ; 

'Tis in Wild Eden ! 

I have sent my songs up to her — 
Sweetly youth left me ; 



I30 WILD EDEN 

I have given my manhood to woo her, 

And of all bereft me ; 
And nightly I wake from the garden 

That heth remote, apart, 
On the bourn of the hopeless heart ; — 

'Tis in Wild Eden. 



THE BLOOD-RED BLOSSOM 131 



" Whence comest thou, Child, when April wakes, 
So phantom-fair through these green brakes? 
Why wilt thou follow, fond and fain. 
My footsteps to the wood again? 

" Why, as I rest by this gray rock, 

Do thy wet eyes the violets mock? 

O, tell me why, in thy white bosom, 

Thou ever wearest the blood-red blossom?" — 

" Thou comest to watch the violets die, 
And over early love to sigh ; 
Thou comest to watch the wild-rose waken. 
And drop thy tears o'er love forsaken. 

" And wouldst thou know why these three years. 
When April wakes, I rise in tears? 
And wouldst thou know why in my bosom 
I wear forever the blood-red blossom ? 



132 WILD EDEN 

" 'Twas here I grew, warm nature's child, 
Too young to be by love beguiled; 
I took the mantle of the spring 
To be my infant covering. 

" My heart was full of tender loves, 
Soft as a dove-cote full of doves ; 
I brought the violets kisses true. 
Warm as the sun and fresh as dew ; 

" Loved to-day and wished the morrow, 
Went blue-eyed and knew no sorrow, 
Dreaming what I saw, and seeing 
What I dreamed, a gentle being ; 

" Seeing, dreaming, loving all, 
What should such a child befall, 
Save the sunshine, save the breeze 
Blowing to the shining seas? 

" O, fair I flowered in opening youth, 
Too pure to doubt that love is truth ; 
I took the fragrance of the May 
To be the sweetness of my clay. 



THE BLOOD-RED BLOSSOM 133 

" Came the spirit of Desire ; 
Came the finding of the lyre ; 
Came the night without repose ; 
Came the singing of the rose. 

" I saw it open, fresh and fair, 
And spread upon the country air ; 
I saw the shy bud swell apart, 
And at the last give all its heart. 

" I felt a tremor seize my breast. 
And hopes unknown and unconfest ; 
I only knew some joy to be 
By joy that then was dear to me. 

" And down I knelt, and kissed it oft. 
Kisses many, pure, and soft ; 
I thought — I was so childish wise — 
God planted it in Paradise. 

" O, bUthe beneath the branch of June 
My heart danced with the stars in tune ; 
And, throb on throb, deep nature's flood 
Grew warm and gladdened in my blood. 



134 WILD EDEN 

" O, love began as Phosphor bright 
Melts on the rosy breast of light ; 
O, love began as this wild wood 
Quires with its red-throat multitude ! 

" I gave my body to sweet Desire ; 
I gave my soul to the shrill lyre ; 
And all night long, without repose, 
I sang the beauty of the rose. 

" And I forgot the violets dead, 
And many a lily's golden head ; 
And I passed by all gentle flowers 
Wherewith love decks his mortal bowers. 

" My blood is faint, my cheeks are pale, 
Since I began the deathless tale ; 
And thee I follow, fond and fain. 
When to the wood thou goest again. 

" By this gray rock I stand, a child ; 
My eyes are wet, my looks are wild ; 
I see a deep wound in thy breast, 
And tears bedew thy secret rest. 



THE BLOOD-RED BLOSSOM 135 

" The wood shall wilt, the grass shall wither, 
But with the spring will I come hither ; 
And when from all things here I fade. 
With lovers dead shalt thou be laid. 

" And now thou knowest why these three years, 
When April wakes, I rise in tears ; 
And now thou knowest why in my bosom 
I wear forever the blood-red blossom." 



136 WILD EDEN 



I WILL go down in my youth to the hoar sea's infinite 
foam ; j 

I will bathe in the winds of heaven ; I will nest where the j 
white birds home : I 

Where the sheeted emerald ghtters and drifts with bursts ! 

of snow, I 

I 
In the spume of stormy mornings, I will make me ready I 

and go ; 
Where under the clear west weather the violet surge is j 

rolled, j 

I will strike with the sun in heaven the day-long league 1 

of gold ; I 

Will mix with the waves, and mingle with the bloom of 

the sunset bar, , 

And toss with the tangle of moonbeams, and call to the ; 

i 
morning star ; j 

And wave and wing shall know me a sea-child even as [ 

they, I 

Of the race of the great seafarers a thousand years if | 
a day. 



SEAWARD 137 

For far in the dawn of England, by the gray Devonian 

shore 
There dwelt a cluster of fishers who drew from the sea 

their store ; 
And aye as the morning mounted, they took the ocean's 

breath, 
They shook out sail, they sHpped away, they gave great 

odds to death ; 
In httle scores they spoiled the seas, wherever helm could 

steer, 
And grafting greatness through the world they planted 

England here ; 
Nor rested from sea-labor between the star-set poles, — 
Two centuries their schooners plunged on the Gorges' 

shoals ; 
And when the new world's morning unveiled earth's 

vaster face, 
And God poured hence the flood-tides of his many- 

fountained grace, 
From Arctic to Antarctic, by either far-flung Cape, 
Wherever points the compass, the great sea-roads they 

shape ; 
iThey cleave the Indian Ocean, they chart the China 

Seas, 



138 WILD EDEN 

The coral-tusked Pacific they have vanquished at their 
ease; 

They haunt the Coast of Gold, they hang on the Isles of 
Spice, 

They have summered the Tropic Trades, they have 
wintered the Polar ice ; 

And dropping home they anchored in the quiet harbor- 
bars, 

Who through the winds of all the world had flung our 
shining stars. 

Mine is this blood-red lineage, 'twixt the glories of birth 
and death, 

That gave for the breath of my nostrils the salt sea- 
breath ! 

Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, soul of my soul, 

To thee, man-nourishing Ocean, I come — make me 
whole ! 

I am weary in blood and nerve, weary in brain and limb, 

Weary in sense and feeling, and the lights of life burn 
dim. 

Ah, soon will the hill of the violets be mounded deep 
with snows ; 

A mist comes out of the lilies, and flame from the breath 
of the rose ; 



SEAWARD 139 

And all this marvellous beauty is a madness in my 

brain ; 
Forever my joyful being is dying — dying in pain ; 
Of the flush of the bough, of the fragrance of woods, 

of the moan of the dove 
Weary — and weary of passion — and thrice, thrice weary 

of love ! 

O, the bitter-sweet illusion of the seeming-happy hours, 
The pure thoughts, the sweet awe, the darkness-budding 

bowers ! 
O, beautiful in noble hearts love's dawn-sweet garden 

stands, 
But the breath of one brief whisper shall sow the place 

with sands ! 
O, fair in love's great ages, down the thousand years of 

rhyme 
Rings the tourney, shines the laurel of the courtly 

time ! 
But here is haunting of houses where they chatter of yea 

and nay, 
Chatter of title and fortune, chatter the heart away ; 
The lairs of social lies, the golden barter base, — 
Not to decline on these have I seen love face to face ! 



I40 WILD EDEN 

I will rise, I will go from the places that are dark with 

passion and pain, 
From the sorrow-changed woodlands and a thousand 

memories slain. 

light gone out in darkness on the cliff I seek no more 
Where she I worshipped met me in her girlhood at the 

door ! 

O, bright though years how many ! farewell, sweet guid- 
ing star — 

The wild wind blows me seaward over the harbor-bar ! 

Better thy waste, gray Ocean, the homeless, heaving plain, 

Than to choke the fount of life and the flower of honor 
stain ! 

1 will seek thy blessed shelter, deep bosom of sun and 

storm, 
From the fever and fret of the earth and the things that : 

debase and deform ; j 

For I am thine ; from of old thou didst lay me, a child, i 

at rest | 

i 
In thy cradle of many waters, and gav'st to my hunger | 

thy breast; ; 

Remember the dreamful boy whom thy beauty preserved ' 

from wrong, — , I 

Thou taughtest me music, O Singer of the never-silent song ! I 



SEAWARD 141 

Man-grown, I will seek thy healing ; though from worse 

than death I fly, 
Not mine the heart of the craven, not here I mean to 

die! 
Let me taste on my lips thy salt, let me live with the sun 

and the rain. 
Let me lean to the rolling wave and feel me man again ! 
O, make thee a sheaf of arrows as when thy winters rage 

forth, — 
Whiten me as thy deep-sea waves with the blanching 

breath of the North ! 
0, take thee a bundle of spears from thine azure of burn- 
ing drouth. 
Smite into my pulses the tremors, the fervors, the blaze 

of the South ! 
So might my breath be snow-cold, and my blood be pure 

like fire. 
The heavenly souls that have left me will come back to 

sustain and inspire. 
Take me — I come — O, save me in the paths my fathers 

trod! — 
Then fling me back to the battle where men labor the 

peace of God ! 



THE PLAYERS' ELEGY AND 
OTHER POEMS 



tE^lje pai?er0* (ll;leg^ on t\)t SDeatt) of CDtotn 
)15ootl) 

READ AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE IN THE MADISON 
SQUARE CONCERT HALL, NOVEMBER 1 3, 1 893 

Linger ye here, all lovers of the soul, 
Nor, careful of our grief, too far remove 
From the last rites of love ! 
Bend hither your sad hearts, no more to flow 
With deaths of ill-starred kings and tears of time, 
Plucked from your bosoms by a feigned woe, 
But from the living fountain learn to shed 
Some drops of sorrow for the player dead. 
While round his earth dirges of slumber go ! 
Who mourn him, if not ye he taught to weep ? 
Yours are the hearts he sought, the hearts he won. 
This solemn hour with sad observance keep, 
O living throng, felt round his mortal sleep 
With man's long tribute unto greatness gone ! 

Ah, not as o'er the violet in his prime, 
For him sweet pastoral notes and mused rhyme 
L 145 



146 THE PLAYERS' ELEGY 

The shroud of beauty weave, and leave him so ; 
But honor's breath and virtue's pure acclaim, 
Meeds of long life, guerdons of happy fame. 
To future ages shall his blazon show. 
In lowly dust abides his buried head. 
But in the thoughts of men he aye shall climb, 
Who greatly gave his life to noble ends, 
And in himself his country's honor stored. 
And, past our borders, was our fame abroad. 
Not unlamented he to night descends 
Who with the people's life his genius blends ; 
Innumerous sorrow and unseen farewell. 
And what the heart but to itself doth tell. 
Shall be his passing-bell. 

The wide stage darkens with such rare eclipse 
As brings the hush upon all breathing lips ; 
Yet is this silence one that doth belong 
To music, and this shadow unto song ; 
Nor shall the Muse's ample store afford 
Less than her flourished laurel for his shroud, 
Who followed, for his master and his lord. 
Her son, on whom applauding ages crowd — 
Him who, erewhile — him, too — with sorrow loud 
And Thames's song, was to his silence borne 



THE PLAYERS' ELEGY 147 

In Stratford ; yet again she bids men mourn 
Her tragic grave, and by the Atlantic sea 
Hath set her stone of perfect memory. 
Nor thou the last — great Mother of our verse 
And Avon's source, that loudest thy fame doth sound, 
Who laid thy emblems on his sable hearse — 
Honor the fellow of thy master-mind, 
Who, far as round the illumined world doth reach 
The large dominion of thy conquering speech. 
Bore England's greatest message to mankind ! 
To him once more let all men's voices roll, 
Though the loud plaudit fallen to low lament : 
The breath of praise to him be, mourning, sent 
From city and continent 

And every soil his voice made Shakspere's ground ! 
Yet greatest love for him shall here be found. 
For first of men bom ours he did advance 
In the world's front our title to the crown, 
And with old glory blend our young renown, 
In tragedy a victor ; and his glance 
Knew none but equals on that ancient ground. 
While rolled his triumph to the Danube's bound. 
What could he less, inheriting his race. 
Ancestral honor, and the happy breed 



THE PLAYERS' ELEGY 

That from old Burbage heired the players' art, 

And in young Garrick treasured up the seed, 

In Kemble majesty, in Kean made grace. 

The masters come not oft, 

Who lighten in the soul, and ride aloft 

On old Imagination's winged sphere ; 

But he was native there. 

And could that orb of pale dominion steer, 

Who bore the soul of Shakspere in his heart 

And bodied forth his world. O potent art. 

Clothing with mortal mould the poet's thought, 

That so could recreate 

The beauty of dead princes and their state, 

And all that glory to perdition brought. 

Sorrows of song ! O noble breast o'erfraught, 

That such a weight of perilous stuff could carry, 

And to the old words marry 

The music of his tongue, his princely mien, 

And beauty like the Muses' Mercury, 

That like an antique god he trod the scene, 

And every motion carved him where he stood 

Fit for eternity ! 

Nor came he to this height by happy chance ; 
Nor birth nor fortune to that presence thrust ; 



THE PLAYERS' ELEGY 149 

But wisest labor and strict governance. 

Lower than in himself he dared not trust, 

But his dear study of perfection made, 

Increasing nature's gifts with learning's aid. 

The scholar's page oft lit his lonely hour, 

Yet spared all knowledge alien to his power ; 

The true tradition, wandered from its source, 

Taught by his memory, found its ancient course : 

Informed with mind, now Shylock shook the stage, 

And subtly tempered burst Lear's awful rage. 

And more he brought than yet had ever been 

To plant illusion in the painted scene, 

And bade the arts a royal tribute pour 

To make the pageant wealthier than before ; 

As in a living Rome ran Caesar's blood, 

And round the lovers fair Verona stood ; 

Yet well he knew the action to maintain 

Against the scene, that else were laid in vain ; 

Happy who first had learned, though hid from youth, 

What Prosper taught him from the buried book 

Whereon the brooding eyes of genius look — 

The way unto the heart is simple truth. 

Thus did he mount the dais of the throne, 

Thus did he leap into the royal siege. 



I50 THE PLAYERS' ELEGY 

And filled the stage, and in himself summed all. 

Hark in our ears the poor Fool's lip-crushed moan ! 

Weep, Bolingbroke ! he weeps, thy crownless liege 1 

Mount, Richard, mount ! thy bloody murders call ! 

Alas, our eyes have seen. 

As if no other woe than this had been, 

The heart-break of the Moor, and, dark behind, 

Traced frank lago's intellectual stealth 

And panther footfall in the generous mind. 

How oft with hearts elate 

We watched the Cardinal play the match with fate, 

While, trembling, shook the state 

More than his age — whose mind, a kingdom's wealth. 

Made everything but innocence his tool. 

Daunted the throne and headlong threw the fool ! 

With Cassius did we plot, with Brutus walk. 

O, why remember, now that all is fled. 

How deep as life the fond illusion spread 

Round him, who now is dead. 

Till we with Hamlet seemed to live and talk ! 

O tender soul of human melancholy 
That o'er him brooded hke the firmament ! 
Thence had his eyes their supernatural fires 
And his deep soul its element of night ; 



THE PLAYERS' ELEGY 151 

Thence had he felt the touch of great thoughts wholly 

That with mortality but ill consent, 

The star-crost spirit's unconfined desires, 

That in this brief breath plumes its fiery flight ; 

And on his brows hung ever the pale might 

Of intellectual passion, inward bent, 

Musing the bounds of Nature's continent ; 

There love, that flies abreast with thoughts of youth, 

And glides, a splendor, by the wings of truth, 

Over the luminous vague to darkness went ; 

Like some slow-dying star down heaven's pole, 

It moves o'er earth's blind frame and man's dark soul. 

And passes out of sight, 

And the lone soul once more confines its light. 

So worked the poet's passion in his heart, 

And, from within, his blood dark influence lent. 

While with the body, there, the spirit blent, 

And stamped the player of creative art — 

The soul incarnate in its mortal bloom. 

The infinite, shut in how little room — 

The word, the act — no more ; yet thereof made 

The player who the heart of Hamlet played ! 

Ah, who shall e'er forget the sweet, g-rave face, 

The beauty flowering from a stately race, 



152 THE PLAYERS' ELEGY 

The mind of majesty, the heart of grace? 
How like himself did all things there appear, 
And hued like him ! over whose own dear head 
Stood the dark planet, and its burden shed — 
A world disordered, a distempered sphere, 
Crooked events, and roughness everywhere, — 
The jar of Nature's frame since, earthward wheeled. 
First with nativity the stars grew sad, 
And prescience of what should be sorrow, had. 
These were his world — who had a world within 
Of augury that bankrupts Nature's bond, 
A power, past her will, not from her source. 
Felt in the mind that lightens round its throne, 
Majestic flames, inheriting her gloom, 
Pale splendors, yet with power to illume 
Time's buried tract and reaches of the tomb ; 
There reigns the spirit, there is truly known. 
In whose unclouded world doth Nature roll. 
Herself an image ; there, by shadows shown. 
He held the mirror up within the soul, 
And from his bosom read the part alone, 
The infinite of man within him sealed, 
And played himself — O, with what truth exprest ! 
He plucked the mystery from the master's breast. 



THE PLAYERS' ELEGY 153 

But ah, what mortal plucks it from his own ? 

Such was our Hamlet, whom the people knew, 
A soul of noble breath, sweet, kind, and true ; 
Our flesh and blood, yet of the world ideal. 
So native to immortal memory 
That to the world he hardly seems to die 
More than the poet's page, where buried lie 
The form and feature of eternity ; 
But when we look within, what spirits there 
Move in the silence of that hallowed air ! 
He in the mind shall his black mantle wear. 
Pore on the book, and greet the players dear, 
And make dead Yorick with his memory fair. 
But ah, for us — alas ! who knew him near, 
Nearer the loss ; ah, what shall yet appear 
Of all he was? — For us the vacant chair, 
For us the vanished presence from the room, 
The silent bust, the portrait hung with gloom ; 
He will not come, not come ! 
Yet doth his figure linger on the sense, 
And memory her sacred relics save 
Of voice, and hand, and silent influence. 
That some shall carry with them to the grave. 
No more beside the lighted hearth he stands. 



154 THE PLAYERS' ELEGY 

Bringing us welcome from o'erflowing hands — 
Our host, our benefactor, and our friend. 
Faultless in all, who all in one could blend : 
Gracious, with something of old reverence ; 
Generous, who never knew the gift he gave ; 
Thoughtful, who for the least himself would waive ! 
How oft we saw him in the evening light, 
The patient sufferer in our daily sight ! 
Here was his home ; here were his gathered friends ; 
Blest is the life that in such friendship ends ! 
Nor further looks the verse, though taught to see 
More nigh that heart of noble privacy. 
Bosom of perfect trust, from guile how free, 
An open soul, with reticence refined ; 
Yet when he spoke a child might read his mind : 
So great a soul had such simplicity. 

Cease, flood of song, thy stream ! now cease, and knoin 
Thy silver fountains from all hearts do flow ! 
Cease now, my song, and learn to say good-night 
To him whose glory lends thy stream its light ! 
The last great heir of the majestic stage 
Has passed, and with him passes a great age ; 
Low with the elders lies his honored head, 
And in one voice are many voices dead. 



THE PLAYERS' ELEGY 155 

O old tradition, crusted with great names, 
Our captain-jewels ! lo, among them set. 
Booth's, like a star ! look you, how sweet it flames, 
And with the lustre of our tears still wet ! 
Farewell — farewell ! move, sweet soul, to thy rest : 
Sleep cloud thy eyes, deep sleep be in thy breast ! 
Go, noble heart, unto our sons a name, 
Through all men's praises to eternal fame ! 
Move, happy spirit, where all voices cease — 
Through our love go, to where love's name is peace ! 



156 ODE 



READ AT THE EMERSON CENTENARY SERVICES, BOSTON, 
MAY 24, 1903 



Not on slight errands come the Immortals ; 

Loud the alarum ; they burst the portals, 

Bringing new ages, 

Saints, poets, sages; 

They rend, they trample ; 

Their power is ample 

To do great deeds and tasks unshared. 

That only the single soul has ever dared. 

In them, and what they can. 

Is the greatness of man. 

II 

O City, set amid the bloom and brine 
Of bowery summer by her Northern seas, 
Sweet is thy azure morn, thy blowing breeze ; 
But deeplier our lives with thee entwine ; 



ODE 157 

And as young children at their mother's knees 

Gaze on her face, such loveliness is thine, 

For half their eyes behold, and half their hearts divine, 

And their dropt lids adore the unseen throne j 

So has our boyhood known. 

The heavenly glory felt in greatness gone 

That in its native fields long lingers on : 

Blest feet that walked thy ancient ways, 

And edged with light thy morning days ; 

Forms that along thy ice-bound shore 

The sword and lamp in each hand bore ; 

Who built one age, and hewed the next. 

While Freedom hoards each gospel text ; 

Through lowly lives the frugal centuries roll. 

And each rude cradle holds a child of God ; 

Long generations nurse the new-born soul. 

And show the shining track the Saviour trod ; 

And fairly from that first and famous race 

Who smote the rock whence poured this stream of years. 

Came forth the bloom of prayer and flower of grace 

Whose incense sweeter in the sons appears. 

Mother-state, white with departing May, 
A hundred Mays depart; this beauty aye 



158 ODE 

Streams from thy breasts, a thousand children owning 
Whose lives are made the scriptures of thy youth, 
And him the first, whose early voice intoning 
With pointing finger read God's primal truth. 
From sire to son was stored the sacred seed ; 
Age piled on age to meet a nation's need ; 
Till the high natal hour. 
Rounding to perfect power, 
Upon the verge of confluent ages borne, 
Found genius' height sublime, 
And set a star upon the front of time, 
That spreads, as far as sunset flames, thy spiritual 
mom. 



Ill 



O boon, all other gifts above 

That loads our veins with power, with love, 

Joyful is birth wherever mothers are. 

Since over Bethlehem stood the children's star ! 

Ever by that transcendent sign 

The budding boy is born divine ; 

Infinity into his being flows 

As if all nature flowered in one rose ; 



ODE 159 

A million blooms suffuse the fragrant hills, 

A manhood race, a manhood race, our emerald valleys 

mis! 

I see great cities stand, 
Mothers of equal men. 
Each leading by the hand 
A multitude immense, sweet to command, 
Her clinging broods ; the tool, the book, the pen. 
Letters and arts whereby a man may live, 
To each child she doth give, 
And with fraternity she makes all fast, 
Honoring the spark of God ; she cherisheth 
Its mighty flame to be her blood and breath. 
And her immortal pinion over death ; 
For as these little ones shall fare, she knows, her fates are 
cast. 

A manhood race ! we are not children now. 
Fronting the fates with knit imperial brow, 
Lords over Nature ; fast her mystic reign 
Fades in the finer mystery of the brain. 
That now with intellect and will informs 
Her clashing atoms and her wandering storms ; 



i6o ODE 

Deep in the sphere the mighty magic pUes ; 

Darkness has fled from matter ; from the skies 

Space has departed ; the invisible 

Pestilence shivers in life's ultimate cell ; 

While continents divide like Egypt's sea, 

And dim Pacific floors wonder what thought may be. 

And better in the human strife 

We serve the soul, the lords of life. 

Blending the many-nationed race 

Where God along all bloods has poured the torrent of 

His grace. 
Bright in our midst His Mercy-seat 
Throngs with innumerable feet ; 
Nor hath He made their multitude complete ; 
But where the human storm terrific rears 
Above the flying land. 
One word the throne of heaven hears 
That all tongues understand : 
America, they whisper low 
As down through fire and blood they go, 
Through awful crime and desperate woe. 
To the pale ocean strand ; 
Nor once, nor twice, this rising coast appears 
Beneath its heaven-streaming torch illumed. 



ODE i6i 

Man's ark of safety on the flood of years ; 

There have we clothed them naked, and there fed 

On Freedom's loaf, whose blessed bread, 

Forever multiplied and unconsmiied, 

As if the Master's voice still in it spoke 

Our hands have to uncounted millions broke ; 

There have we wiped away the whole world's tears. 

Wide as the gates of life, let stand our gates, 

Nor them deny whom God denied not birth ; 

Nor, though we house all outcasts of the earth, 

Christ being within our city, fear the fates ! 

O birthright found the sweetest 

That in our blood began ! 

O manhood-faith found fleetest 

Of all the faiths of man ! 

We own the one great Mother 

Who first the man-child bore. 

And every man a brother 

Who wears the form Christ wore. 

Such mighty voices murmured round our youth, 

Souls dedicated to immortal toil. 

While, battle-bound, the fiery wings of truth 

Sublime swept past us o'er the perilled soil ; 



i62 ODE 

For we were born the children of the great, 
Seers of the soul and savers of the state ; 
We saw and heard and touched them, hand and cheek, 
Whose voices now like dying cannon speak ; 
So loud a morn was to our childhood given. 
And mixed with flashes out of heaven 
Pealing words our spirits shook. 
And awful shapes with superhuman look, — 
Our cradle-truths ; so native to our lips. 
That like our mother tongue their thunder slips ; 
We have no memory when it was not so. 
Wherefore we fear not, coming to our own ; 
The eyrie's brood 
Find eagle's food ; 
The blue dominion 
Tires not their pinion ; 

Men are we, greatness that our sons shall know 
Who us inherit ; now we wield alone 
The glory ; for the mighty ones lie low ; 
They are dead, brain and hand ; they are dust, blood 
and bone. 



ODE 163 



IV 



I lay the singing laurels down 

Upon the silent grave ; , 

'Tis vain ; the master slumbers on 

Nor knows the gift he gave. 

I take again the murmuring cro^vn 

Unto the here and now ; 

And every leaf sings Emerson, 

Whose music binds my brow. 

For in this changeful mortal scene, 

Where all things mourn what once has been, 

Only the touch of soul with soul 

At last escapes from death's control : 

And from himself I learnt it, — the true singer 

Must of his own heavens be the bright star-bringer, 

And sphere of dawning lights his morning song ; 

So shall his music to God's time belong, 

Not to an age ; thus did his earth absorb 

The eternal ray, and new enorb 

The star of time ; he heard the wind-harp's strings, 

The cosmic pulse, the chemic dance. 



i64 ODE 

And saw through spirit-mating things 

Man's secular advance ; 

One song the sons of morning sang ; 

One blushed from Nature's lyre ; 

One the Judsean carols rang ; 

One flamed the heart's desire ; 

Thence he snatched with burning palms, 

Hymns and proud millennial psalms ; 

And, high o'er all, one strain no heaven could daunt, 

With notes subhmely dominant, 

Sang victory, victory, victory unto man 

In whose fair soul victorious good began ; 

The vision beautiful, 

The labor dutiful. 

Truth, the finder, 

Love, the binder ; 

And close about our mortal tasks their sacred faces came, 

Sweet faces pale beside our paler flame. 

He fed our souls with holy dew. 

Yet taught us by the line to hew. 

And mix of heaven and earth a new ideal. 

Till harmonies of soul and sense 

Shall everywhere rhyme innocence ; 

And in himself forecast the man he drew ; 



ODE 165 

Him whom farthest years reveal 

In milHons multiplied, 

Swarming green savannahs o'er, 

Purple height and emerald floor. 

The snow-clad and the golden shore, 

And where the coral combers roar, 

In beauty dwelling side by side ; 

A type to show what constitutes a man 

Amid his daily tasks ; 

Even such a type as the pure gospel asks. 

The bravest lover of his kind, the man American. 



And Thou, O Fountain, whence we issued forth. 
Source of all kindly grace and noble worth. 
Who in our fathers poured so wide a flood. 
Leave not our temples, fail not from our blood ; 
Even this that doth along my pulses fleet, 
With all the American years made sweet. 
The sweetest blood that flows ! 
On Thee our lives repose. 
Make us to dwell secure where tempests are. 
And find in peace the mightiest arm of war ; 



1 66 ODE 

And if, past justice' bound, our foes increase. 
Make war the harbinger of larger peace ; 
So in our Capitol shall law be found 
With palm and olive, equal trophies, crowned. 
Last for the soul make we our great appeal : 
There foster and confirm the life ideal ; 
Grant us self-conquest and self-sacrifice, 
Since only upon these may mankind rise. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 167 



OBIIT 1902 

True to the Muses and to mankind true, 
Bard of thy race, amid the foolish sage. 

Take now thy crown among our sacred few, 
Who wast Christ's laureate in a faithless age. 



Menuell :ipi)illtps! 

I SAW him stand, upon the Judgment Day, 
Who in his life all human wrath had braved. 

The appealing angel in his voice, and say : 
" If but one soul be lost, how is man saved?" 



i68 ESSEX REGIMENT MARCH 



€$m Hegiment ^arcl) 

WRITTEN FOR THE EIGHTH MASSACHUSETTS UNITED STATES' 
VOLUNTEER INFANTRY IN THE SPANISH WAR 

Once more the Flower of Essex is marching to the wars j 
We are up to serve the Country wherever fly her Stars ; 
Ashore, afloat, or far or near, to her who bore us true, 
We will do a freeman's duty as we were born to do. 
Lead the van, and may we lead it, 
God of armies, till the wrong shall cease ; 
Speed the war, and may we speed it 
To the sweet home-coming, God of peace ! 

Our fathers fought their battles, and conquered for th( 

right. 
Three hundred years victorious from every stubborn fight 
And still the Flower of Essex from the ancient stock put 

forth, 
Where the bracing blue sea-weather strings the sinews o\ 

the North. 



ESSEX REGIMENT MARCH 169 

The foe on field, the foe on deck to us is all the same ; 
With both the Flower of Essex has played a winning 

game ; 
We threw them on the village green, we cowed them in 

Algiers, 
And ship to ship we shocked them in our first great naval 

years. 



We rowed the Great Commander o'er the ice-bound 
Delaware, 

When the Christmas snow was falling in the dark and 
wintry air ; 

And still the Flower of Essex, like the heroes gone be- 
fore, 

Where the tide of danger surges shall take the laboring 
oar. 



The Flower that first lay bleeding along by Bloody Brook 
Full oft hath Death upgathered in war's red reaping-hook ; 
Its home is on our headlands ; 'tis sweeter than the rose ; 
But sweetest in the battle's breath the Flower of Essex 
blows. 



I70 ESSEX REGIMENT MARCH 

At the best a dear home-coming, at the worst a soldier's 

grave, 
Beating the tropic jungle, ploughing the dark blue wave ; 
But while the Flower of Essex from the granite rock shall 

come. 
None but the dead shall cease to fight till all go marching 

home. j 

i 

March onward to the leaguer wherever it may lie ; t 

The Colors make the Country whatever be the sky j I 

Where round the Flag of Glory the storm terrific blows, 
We march, we sail, whoever fail, the Flower of Essex 
goes. 

Lead the van, and may we lead it, 

God of armies, till the wrong shall cease ; I 

Speed the war, and may we speed it 

To the sweet home-coming, God of peace ! 



THE ISLANDS OF THE SEA 171 



^^t ifl^lanus: of t^e ^ea 

God is shaping the great future of the Islands of the Sea ; 
He has sown the blood of martyrs and the fruit is liberty ; 
In thick clouds and in darkness He has sent abroad His 

word ; 
He has given a haughty nation to the cannon and the 

sword. 

He has seen a people moaning in the thousand deaths 

they die ; 
He has heard from child and woman a terrible dark cry ; 
He has given the wasted talent of the steward faithless 

found 
To the youngest of the nations with His abundance 

crowned. 

He called her to do justice where none but she had 

power ; 
He called her to do mercy to her neighbor at the door ; 
He called her to do vengeance for her own sons foully 

dead ; 
Thrice did He call unto her ere she inchned her head. 



172 THE ISLANDS OF THE SEA 

She has gathered the vast Midland, she has searched her 

borders round ; 
There has been a mighty hosting of her children on the 

ground ; 
Her search-lights lie along the sea, her guns are loud on 

land; 
To do her will upon the earth her armies round her 

stand. 

The fleet, at her commandment, to either ocean turns ; 
Belted around the mighty world her line of battle 

burns ; 
She has loosed the hot volcanoes of the ships of flaming 

hell; 
With fire and smoke and earthquake shock her heavy 

vengeance fell. 

O joyfulest May morning when before our guns went 

down 
The Inquisition priesthood and the dungeon-making 

crown. 
While through red lights of battle our starry dawn burst 

out. 
Swift as the tropic sunrise that doth with glory shout ! 



THE ISLANDS OF THE SEA 173 

Be jubilant, free Cuba, our feet are on thy soil ; 

Up mountain road, through jungle growth, our bravest for 

thee toil ; 
There is no blood so precious as their wounds pour forth 

for thee ; 
Sweet be thy joys, free Cuba, — sorrows have made thee 

free. 

Nor Thou, O noble Nation, who wast so slow to wrath. 
With grief too heavy-laden follow in duty's path ; 
Not for ourselves our lives are ; not for Thyself art Thou ; 
The Star of Christian Ages is shining on Thy brow. 

Rejoice, O mighty Mother, that God hath chosen Thee 
To be the western warder of the Islands of the Sea; 
He Ufteth up, He casteth down, He is the King of Kings, 
Whose dread commands o'er awe-struck lands are borne 
on eagles' wings. 



174 CHILDREN'S HYMN 



Cljiltirrn'sf ^)^mn 

"Thy Kingdom come," 

The Nation's children pray ; 
And may the Uttle patriots of the home 
For Christ prepare the way ! 

Beneath the starry folds that o'er them wave 

Shall they in strength increase ; 
And may our youth be simple, kind, and brave, 

And bring the reign of peace ! 

Far East, far West, far South, far North, 

One home of brothers are ; 
And may some cause to die for lead them forth 

When they go out to war ! 

And may they nobly do and greatly dare, 

And true be every son, 
While o'er her children breathes the Nation's prayer, 

" Thy Will be done ! " 



THE ROSE-GIVER 175 



If love within thee surely wake, 
If springs the will's divine control, 

Bear thou to see the ideal take 
Imperfect form in thy young soul. 



Thick from the banks my unretuming roses 
I strew, love-singing, on the golden river ; 

And every bud the poet's heart discloses ; 

Oft, homesick for his songs, weeps the Rose-giver. 



176 PROFESSOR A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON 



My Persian, leave the Eternal Fire, 

And leave to read the scented scroll, 
Pahlavi, Pali ; nor desire 

Always that glory to unroll. 
Your bright Avesta ; day and night 

God did divide with sun and star 
To show that equal in His sight 

Labor and rest, in mortals are. 
A fragment yet of unspent youth 

Is left ; and yours the social grace 
That finds sweet passages for truth. 

And brings the soul into the face ; 
As oft I prove, whose winter hour 

More than my blazing log you cheer, 
And dropping many a sudden flower 

Of Orient speech make Shiraz here. 
The while with golden-clouded pipes, 

Amid my books, at kindly ease, 
We seek to cast anew the types 

Of that old Truth which cannot cease, — 



PROFESSOR A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON 177 

The dream that hghts the heart's desire. 

The law that whirls the planet's frame, 
One in the never-dying fire, 

One in the never-lighted flame ; 
We strive to trace the world-wide lift 

Of man through poet, prophet, priest ; 
The tongues die out, the races shift, 

But evermore is God increased ; 
And who His flaming path shall bind, 

Which through the Zodiac's mystery runs ? 
Round Zoroaster, undivined, 

The same skies flashed a million suns. 
Still will you chase, uncaptured yet, 

The young wild-fire of Shelley's lore, 
And marvelHng how the Magian met 

His Shadow in the garden, pore ; 
Till light the talk will smoothly veer 

To Shakspere, and our England blend 
With Time's lone names — hid poets dear, 

Like him I prize, once Sidney's friend, 
Greville, wise matter gravely mixed, 

Whose thoughts, he said, were " eagles' food," 
As ours should be, who late have fixed 

Our eyrie, lord of all the wood. 



178 PROFESSOR A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON 

On Morningside ; young eagles there 

Try with contention of their wings 
Who first, with pinions smiting air, 

The sunrise from his plumage flings — 
Columbia's brood : there, even as saith 

Our own glad Scriptures, under God, 
She stirs the nest, she fluttereth 

Over her young, and spreads abroad 
Her wings, and taketh them, and bears 

Them on her wings — ah, too soon flown, 
Our eagles, gone to noble cares 

And tasks of greatness all their own ! 
But few shall such a realm survey 

As you have won, and, craving more, 
Like Alexander, will not stay 

Your Indian conquest, who before 
Iran and Hellas ruled ; refrain 

To tempt the heavens with doing well. 
Lest, from my side too early ta'en, 

Only your memory with me dwell. 



But come ! now burns the autumn sea, 
September-golden, languid blue, 



PROFESSOR A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON 179 

Long morning hours ; till, wild and free, 

With wings as if the great deep flew, 
The wind comes up the harbor-mouth, 

And breaks the calm, and beads the crest, 
And hues the purple-watered South, 

And glitters down the fluttering West ; 
Day slowly dies, nor gathers gloom — 

A softer beauty ; faintly clear 
Through reaches of the rosy bloom 

Revolves the silver starry sphere ; 
Still blows the fragrant brine ; once more 

The island-gateways flood with light ; 
The moon is up ; put off" from shore. 

And lapt on tides of wakeful night. 
And blowing with the canvas cloud, 

Know me in my Atlantic home — 
The wave-wet deck, the singing shroud. 

The rail half buried in the foam ! 
Next morn, new joys. 'Twere long to tell 

This Essex ; I am grown too fond. 
Too many years have loved it well. 

And roved dark wood and lilied pond 
In my first days ; I promise you 

The bird's-nest, though the bird be flown ; 



i8o PROFESSOR A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON 

Come, learn the boy you never knew, 

From odors of the pine-tree blown, 
And heavy salt-scents of the sea, 

And distant gleams, like Virgil's bough ; 
So shall our mutual memories be 

Life-whole, as love is heart-whole now. 
Then shall you go from out the gold 

October to your star-leaved Book, 
And those gray manuscripts unrolled 

Whereon the white-robed Parsees look. 
And they forget these changing hghts 

Of morn and even, here below ; 
To eyes like yours how must our Heights 

Like snowy Alborz' sunrise glow ! 
So springeth there the dawning truth. 

Forever breaking into morn, 
Whose glory in the heart of youth 

With Orient fire, each day, is born. 



TO E. M. O. 



tS^o €♦ ^. #♦ <Bn \)tt ^olDen MlcDDing 

MOTHER heart, whose children, fair and strong. 
And children's children round thy dear hearth stand, 
A love-united and unbroken band. 

While near them presses close a silent throng ; 
Suffer me, too, to come, thy child of song, 
As when in boyhood from the salt sea strand. 
Thy wandering guest, unto the harvest land 

1 came ; whence all thy own to me belong. 
God on thy head pour multiphed His grace. 
And yield thee, nearer to the life divine, 
Foregleams of light, touches of heavenly peace ! 
Long years the mother radiates from thy face, 
And through long years shall still celestial shine 
Unseen, nor in thy children ever cease. 



i82 REQUIEM 



Hequtem 

THOMAS RANDOLPH PRICE 

Sleep, soldier of the South, who loved me well ! 
In many a heart is heard thy passing bell. 
Here in the North where thy last labor was. 
And down lone valleys of the long lost cause 
Where thy young mates, lapped in heroic sleep, 
Their green peace, envied of the Hving, keep. 
The harder lot was thine, — to live and toil 
That sons as noble grace their native soil. 
Sleep, gentle scholar of the golden lore 
Of English speech, who from thy Attic store 
Brought mastery of all tongues that poets use 
And Europe ripens, sacred to the Muse ! 

loyal nature, learned, eloquent. 
Whose kindly courtesy to all men went, 

1 praise thee not for these, though worthy praise ; 
These have I found not seldom in life's ways. 
But the sweet patience which adorned thy life. 
To take the blows of this half-brutish strife, 



REQUIEM 183 

And, if on thee some natural griefs must rain, 
With quietness to dignify thy pain, — 
This, more than all the Muses' garnered art. 
Taught reverence to my eyes, love to my heart ; 
For thou hadst borne the worst, and learned to bear 
All lesser sorrows in one great despair. 
O much enduring soul who enterest peace. 
Still shall our love for thee on earth increase ; 
Now, poet, scholar, soldier, on death's plain 
Sleep with thy early friends in battle slain ! 



TO 1903, COLUMBIA 



tD^o 1903, Columbia 



Twelve are the years Columbia gave to me ; I 

I 
Twelve are the classes of happy memory ; | 

And yours the last of the twelve, and no more shall be.j 

! 

But O, to say farewell and fond adieu ! | 

Four years to me are dear, and dearer far to you ; 
And the years, that seemed so many, are found too few. 

I taught you the ways of life, as poets teach ; 

Scott, Shelley, Tennyson, you heard me preach ; 

Yet most through my own heart to your hearts I reach. 

I taught you Shakspere next, the infinite brain, — 
Romeo, Hamlet, Lear, — our life of pain ; 
And by my art I turned this woe to gain. 

I taught you Plato in his masterhood. 

Who, loving beauty, found thereby the good ; 

Yet in myself nearer to you I stood ; 



TO 1903, COLUMBIA 185 

And more received, giving my brain and heart, 
From whose exhausted springs new fountains start. 
Because you made your Uves of mine a part. 

Where leaped the shell, my heart rowed with the crew; 
My hand was on the tape, where Bishop flew ; 
Where broke the blue flag, I was there with you. 

The years of football your bright records grace ; 
Game called, you saw me always in my place ; 
I taught your Harold the famed Fennel Race ; 

And glad I saw him down the dazed field skim 
In his first years ; and much I honor him. 
Borne shoulder-high, until my eyes grow dim. 

You wonder not who heard that April day, 

I praised, loud-voiced, the perfect Harvard way 

Of Marshall Newell, when I left the play. 

Nor less, because I mingled with you so. 

Shall you my intimate power, befriending, know, 

Lifelong, within your souls, where'er you go. 



i86 TO 1903, COLUMBIA 

O, why recall what was to me most dear, 
The Crown, where duly, year by shining year, 
The best Americans received our cheer? 

Yet more, far more, generous you gave to me, — 
Your banded hearts in perfect loyalty ; 
Whence I your debtor must forever be. 

A thousand times the loud Columbia cheer, 
Linked with my name, has fallen upon my ear, 
Sweeter and sweeter with each passing year, 

Though yours the last with those of old combine ; 
A thousand young Columbia hearts are mine. 
Though yours the last, crowning the happy line 

With love and honor, honor and love to one, 
Whose labor for Columbia hearts is done. 
Though not his love, a love not lightly won. 

I murmur not, when fate has struck the ball ; 
The work our hands have raised can never fall ; 
Yet in my heart I grieve to end it all. 



I 



TO 1903, COLUMBIA 187 

Not unto me be praise, the praise not mine ; 
Praise ye the poets dead, and power divine 
Whence they had strength ; pray God, their strength be 
thine ! 

Break hands, and part ; but long this verse endures, 

And love to all and each loyal assures. 

With yours, and ever and ever yours, and yours. 



i88 EXETER ODE 

€xtttt <B^t 

READ AT THE DEDICATION OF ALUMNI HALL, PHILLIPS 
EXETER ACADEMY, JUNE 1 7, I903 



There is no Heliconian spring 

Nor fountain of perpetual youth 

So much of Paradise can bring 

As lights the haunt of early truth, 

Here where budding boys together 

Fill the world with April weather. 

And the branch of life is breathing sweet ; 

Sound of Hnib and pure of heart, 

Eager tremblers for the start, 

In the mimic arts of power they compete ; 

And the ringing of the coming years is in their feet. 

We turn, and with fond gaze look back 
On scenes that nurse their growing years, 
The triumphs of the field and track, 
The glory of the distant cheers, 
Where they forge fresh strength and daring, 
Schoolboy ensigns proudly wearing 



EXETER ODE 189 

To the victor-music in their blood ; 

In the onset and the shock 

Learn how human forces lock 

To the banded bringing of the common good ; 

And the youthful fighters melt in joyful brotherhood. 

Now for us a dearer past remains 
Which may their manhood, too, recall, 
Higher pleasures, deeper pains, 
That here heaven's grace let fall; 
Motions of the heart of youth 
Beneath the brooding wings of truth ; 
Burning clefts of opening heaven 
To Paul by old Damascus given ; 
The lonely hours, the unshed tears, 
Sacred hopes and holy fears, 
While rumors of the distant strife 
Came drifting from the vague of life ; 
These also to our high youth did belong ; 
And the sad majesty of song, 
The tragic load of Homer's age, 
The breathing woe of Virgil's page, 
Swept the young soul that yearns for home 
Where save through death it shall not come. 



IQO 



EXETER ODE 



Ah me, beneath this blue elm-branched sky 

How many a boy since then comes nigh 

To God in his infinitude, 

As the sweet arbutus puts forth beneath the sighing 

wood ! 
In every youth once beats the poet's heart, 
While in his bosom these bright ardors start ; 
And dearly then the affections, lorn and lone. 
Cling round the breast where first a friend is known : 
Hark, 'tis the rushing cries of life and sound of trumpets 

blown ! 

II 

Another morn has fired the world ; 

A mightier labor is begun ; 

A thousand standards bright unfurled 

Lean forward from the rising sun. 

Who are these the fresh hosts heading. 

Prompt to lead and strong in steading, 

To the old tradition grandly true ? 

Whose that rock-like brow of fate, 

Black with thunder of the state ? — 

Round us when insidious discord falsely drew, 

Freedom's barrier of men that great voice built anew. 



EXETER ODE 191 

There soldiers shine, there scholars walk, 

Dark heroes plough the navied sea ; 

And arms and letters interlock 

To make our golden history. 

These are they whose young eyes beaming 

Under these dear elms went dreaming 

What the world should be when they were men ; 

Sinews of the upland farm, 

Souls with old religion warm, * 

Never time brings here that wielding race again, 

Equal lords of church and state, mace and sword and pen. 

Forward ever move the endless rows 

Upon the battle-tossing fields ; 

Glory brightens where they close ; 

Truth blazes from their shields ; 

Servants not of brutal wars 

That only leave a nation's scars ; 

They have chosen better parts. 

To serve mankind with healing arts, 

To bring on earth humaner laws. 

Lift o'er force persuasion's cause, 

And ease the strife of rich and poor. 

While love and peace grow more and more ; 



192 EXETER ODE 

They plant new virtues in their country's soil, 
Wielding the world of modern toil 
Whence science pours in ceaseless floods 
The horn of man's beatitudes ; 
Their treasury is knowledge free, 
Their highest wisdom liberty ; 
And glad their leading is, who, where they go. 
The victor's track with blessings strew ; 
Whose error-killing power entrains 
Dethroned superstitions dead, dead immemorial pains. 
Unto this war we swore our youthful vow ; 
Unto this war our sons press forward now 
From this fair fount of civilizing power. 
Where life's first vigor did our young limbs dower, . 
Loved in our loyal boyhood here, and loved in manhood's 
hour. 

Ill 

Guard well the Mother-eagle's nest 
That stores the Northern granite's might. 
Whence, ranging down the sunny West, 
A hundred broods took flight ! 
There the golden fledglings slumber 
Who the morning light shall cumber 



EXETER ODE 193 

With the clangor of their rising wings ; 

Unto them from unborn years 

Radiance of new glory nears, 

And the rushing of their pinions music brings, 

That the genius of the ageless world forever sings. 

The noble lives that went before 
Shall nourish best those hearts of youth, 
The virtues of the men of yore 
Establish them in ways of truth. 
Set before their morning beauty 
Our worn chieftains, great in duty, 
Who in life's rich danger took their share ! 
Where is honor like to this. 
Where is fame so touched with bliss 
As to be remembered long and fairly there. 
There to be remembered fairly where the thoughts of 
boyhood were? 

Honor to the brave, the wise, the good. 
Whose lives in this old school began ! 
Our Exonian brotherhood 
Earns gratitude of man. 
Here let bronze and marble trace 
The features of each vanished face ; 
o 



194 EXETER ODE 

Stately portraits, looking down, 
Show Bancroft's smile and Webster's frown, 
Palfrey benign and Everett's grace, 
Cass's craft and Phillips' race, 
With Soule's and Abbott's hoary age, 
And all our sons of heritage. 

Here shall they grow, though haughty, high, and wise, 
Familiar with youth's happy eyes ; 
For even the greatest, life being done, 
All labor o'er beneath the sun. 
Shall nowhere find a nobler part 
Than here to touch some fair boy's heart ; 
They watch his going out and coming in, 
Sink in his mind, and deeply win ; 
They meet young thousands face to face 
And from their silent seats they mix with this new race. 
The youngest student heads our farthest hope. 
Our edge and limit of prophetic scope ; 
Ah, if, past death, our torch of life still flames. 
Ah, here if boyhood treasures up our names. 
This is the laurel's greenest growth, found fresh in younger 
fames. 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 



tE^e i^ortl) ^\)ott OTaccl) 

C. L. D. 

OBIIT MDCCCLXXVIII 



First dead of all my dead that are to be, 

Who at life's flush with me wast wont to roam 
The pine-fringed borders of this surging sea, 

From far and lonely lands Love brings me home 
To this wide water's foam; 
Here thou art fallen in thy joyful days. 

Life quenched within thy breast, hght in thy eyes ; 
And darkly from thy ruined beauty rise 
These flowerless myrtle-sprays ; 
The hills we trod enfold thee evermore. 
The gray and sleepless sea breaks round the orphaned 
shore. 



All things are lovely as they were, and still 

They draw with gladness toward me as a friend; 
197 



198 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

The evening star doth touch me with the thrill 
Of welcome, and the waves their voices blend 
To hail my exile's end. 
Oft while I wandered in those weary lands, 

This dear-remembered shore would comfort 

me. 
Seeing in thought the everlasting sea 
Washing his yellow sands ; 
But now the scene I longed for gives me pain 
Since he is dead, and ne'er shall feel its joy again. 



m 

Still planet, making beautiful the west, 

Bright bringer of the stars and sheltered sleep, 
Easing our hearts, as some beloved guest, 
Whom for a little while our eyes may keep. 
And through long years shall weep ; 
O eloquent with flashes to the soul. 

Even as his eyes beneath thy pure empire 
Beamed the mute music of the heart's desire. 
Thee, too, doth fate control ; 
And brief as his thy hour of light must be — 
To earth her starry hush, my solitude to me ! 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 199 

IV 

Yet here our dayspring long ago was born, 

While heaven still hovered near earth's dusky frame ; 
Light touched the isles, and joyously the morn 
O'erflowed the orient with prophetic flame, 
And on the waters came, 
Crimson and pearl, and woke the singing shore ; 
On over murmuring waves the glad hght swept ; 
On through the west the loosened glory leapt 
The far blue uplands o'er ; 
And slowly rose the sun, and made the sea 
White with his splendor, and filled heaven with purity. 



Upon this beach we welcomed in the world. 

And loved the lore of its wise solitude. 
Where on the foaming sands the surges swirled. 
Or broad, blue-belted calm, in blessed brood, 
Lay many a shining rood ; 
Here in that prime we kept our boyish tryst, 
When woke our April and the need to rove ; 
We trod the mantle that the white moon wove, 
We pierced the star-looped mist ; 



200 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

And ever where our eager feet might roam, 
The air was morning, and the loneliest spot was home. 

VI 

The eloquent voices of the yearning sea 

Called to us, strong as syllables of fate, 
And, wafting in, like some lost memory, 
Subdued us to the haunting hopes that wait 
Round boyhood's rapt estate ; 
The deep spell moved, a passion in our blood. 
And made the throbbing of our hearts keep time 
Unto the laughter of the waves, and chime 
With thunders of the flood ; 
And subtly as a dream takes hue and form. 
Our spirits clothed their youth in ocean's sun and 
storm. 

VII 

Still would we watch, wave-borne from dawn to dark, 
The pools of opal gem the windless bay ; 

Or touch at eve the purple isles, and mark 
Where, by the moon, far on the edge of day, 
The shore's pale crescent lay ; 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 201 

Or up broad river-reaches are we gone, 

Through sunset mirrored in the hollow tide — 
In beauty sphered, as some lone bird enskied, 
The halcyon boat drifts on. 
To twilight, and the stars, and deepest night, 
With phosphorescent gleams, and dark oars dropping 
light. 

VIII 

Ah, then a presence moved within this deep. 

That more than beauty made its regions dear ; 
O'er the long levels of its golden sleep 

The light that beams from the eternal year 
Flashed on the spirit clear ; 
And wheresoe'er we saw the ocean roll, 
With sounds of harmony his waves among. 
The song that breathed before the lyre was strung 
Gave echo to the soul ; 
And tremulous the immortal instincts woke 
That prophesy of Him in whom the sweet dawn broke. 

IX 

Alas, the faery light that truth once wore ! 
Alas, the easy questing of the heart ! 



202 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

When, by the hushed and visionary shore, 

The dreaming hope, wherein all things have part, 
Made our young pulses start ! 
Once, once I knew thy sweetness, O salt sea ! 
I reaped along thy furrows bearded grain ; 
Thy groves, that never drink the sun nor rain. 
Gave nectarous fruit to me ; 
And all thy herbless pastures yielded wine, 
Deep-hearted, fragrant, bright — ah, then his hand 
clasped mine 1 



Ay, heart with heart companioned we went on, 

And ever lovelier was the wooded shore ; 
More joyous bloomed the May, and warmer shone 
The slant light down the forest's muffled floor, 
With music vaulted o'er ; 
Ah, when the bluebird through the meadows darts, 
Still yellow dogtooths gleam amid the brakes. 
And fearlessly on all the green-leaved lakes 
Lilies unfold their hearts ; 
Earth's children slumber when the wild winds rise — 
The tempest passes o'er, and heaven looks through their 
eyes. 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 203 

XI 

But the dark pines, whose heart is like the sea's, 

Mourn for one darling flower they nurtured here, 
With morning fed, and deep, deep harmonies — 
The sweetest blossom that the windy year 
E'er rifled and left sere ; 
Wake, O ye violets preluding the May, 
And many a barren slope for beauty win ! 
Burst, O white laurels, flush your cups within, 
And whisper, spray to spray ! 
But till the cypress buds, and blooms the yew, 
The sylvan year brings not the love that once ye knew. 



Too swiftly fled the green and fragrant time ! 

Bleak on the vacant earth the North Wind fell, 
Bitter and fierce, to beat the frozen clime, 

In shrivelled fields and ruined woods to dwell. 
And on the flood's black swell ; 
But us the rude transformer could not change ; 
We saw his pale dominions gleam afar, 
His keen skies flash with many a friendlier star. 
And, lo, the vision strange — 



204 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

Dear to our faith — far in the ahen north, 
With faltering hues and faint, a dream of morn stole 
forth. 

XIII 

Such presages before us ever went, 

And flushed the skies with joyful heraldings ; 
We trusted beauty — 'tis the element 

Wherein the soul unfolds her poising wings, 
And heavenward soars, and sings; 
But in the dawn and by the star-swept tides. 
In dim melodious aisles of lonely pines. 
We felt the heart of sorrow none divines. 
That in all things abides ; 
And borne on sighing winds came sounds of woe, 
Whose burden well we knew, but he feared not to 
know. 

XIV 

I saw the beauty of the early world 
More lovely imaged in his lucid mind ; 

Pure at his heart of innocence impearled 

Shone the white truth no search can ever find, 
In love, as light, enshrined ; 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 205 

Him nature folded childlike to her breast, 

Gave him her peace, her strength, her ease, her joy ; 
Fate could not move him, doubt could not annoy, 
Nor sorrow, all men's guest ; 
And woven of her music fell his voice 
On the wide-glimmering eve, and bade my soul rejoice. 

XV 

" Ere yet we knew Love's name," he said to me, 
" He gave the new earth to our boyish hands ; 
For us morn blossoms, and the azure sea 

Ruffles and smooths his long and gleaming sands 
Upon a hundred strands; 
In green and gold the radiant mist exhales. 

When through the willow buds the blue March blows, 
And sowing Persia through the world the rose 
Reddens our western vaies ; 
Clasped with the light, bathed with the glowing air. 
Rest we in his embrace who made our paths so fair ! 

XVI 

" Why fear we ? wherefore doubt ? is Love not strong, 
Whose starry shield o'er-roofs our mortal way. 



2o6 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

Who makes his home within our hearts lifelong, 
An instinct to divine, a law to sway, 
A hero's faith to stay? 
See, all life beats responsive to his might ; 
Its yearning in his tameless hope began ; 
Its dawning triumph in the heart of man 
Is his far-beaconing light ; 
He builds the empire of the golden years ; 
The red strife, too, is his, the field of blood and tears. 

XVII 

"Through Him we look toward life with conquering 
eyes, 
Nor swerve, nor falter, though his fire must blend 
With our young hearts as flame with sacrifice, 
Consuming all we are for that great end 
He bids our souls befriend ; 
The laws invincible of his firm state 

Work with us till the vision grows the fact. 
And thought, slow-suppling into perfect act, 
Makes our desire our fate ; 
Nor elsewise unto truth may man attain. 
Though built in Shelley's heart, though orbed in Shaks- 
pere's brain. 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 207 



'' His are we, as we were before we saw 

The murder-strife that ravin cannot sate, 
The fierce, incessant moan, the strokes of law, 
The deep betrayal of our birth and state 
That baffles us with fate ; 
Be life's inevitable sadness ours, 

The evil that we cannot help but will. 
The good with viewless consequence in ill, 
Our maimed and thwarted powers ! 
Nor yet " — I hear him say — " repining know. 
The shadow-clouded earth through the blue deep must go. 

XIX 

" It moves, and plunges to the central sun. 

Its paltry ruin flashes, and is gone ; 
The stars, indifferent, their calm courses run, 
The constellations shine as erst they shone. 
The clustered heavens go on ; 
Who shall foresee of all the one blind doom 
When darkness shall inhabit torpid space, 
Still, starless, orphaned of dawn's lovely face, 
Unfathomable tomb ! — 



2o8 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

Yet may the soul pitch her adventure high, 
With beauty and with love impassioned, though we die. 



XX 

" Beauty that sings of unisons unseen. 

Bright emanation of consenting laws. 
In flower, wave, shell, blue skies, and pastures green, 
The passing of the power that hath no pause, 
That knows nor fate nor cause ; 
The thrill of life aye pulsing through the void. 
With rhythmic motions felt in sun and star, 
And galaxies of splendor streaming far. 
Nor in their woe destroyed ; 
The presence wonderful, beneath, above — 
In the lone heart of man it wakes, incarnate Love. 



XXI 

" It hallows all, the aureole He wears 
Whom frail mortality hath never bound ; 

Who in his hands the burning sphere upbears, 
Though stars grow gray, their dateless ruin found, 
And perish in their round ; 



J 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 209 

He is — and, lo, 'tis loveliness we see, 

The heavens majestic, and the joyous earth ; 
Is not — and all the glory and the mirth 
Are things of memory ; 
Long, long o'er us be his divine control — 
The beauty of the world, the rapture of the soul ! " 

XXII 

Such musings ours upon the moonlit shore, 

While dark with motion sways the luminous tide ; 
On come the long, black waves, and, whitening o'er, 
Fall, far-resounding, eddy, and divide, 
And up the smooth sands glide : 
So, hfe-engirdling, shone eternal truth, 
So darkly luminous, so swift, so strong. 
Flooding our mortal brink, it broke along 
The winding shores of youth ; 
There silent, glad, in Love's repose we lay — 
Calm was among the stars, peace on the heaving bay. 

XXIII 

O, wherefore could we not forever dwell 
In that seclusion of the world new-born, 



2IO THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

Where on our passive youth the promise fell 

That dawns beneath the sweet brows of the morn, 
The light none lives to scorn ! 
Too soon we left the haunts of boyish thought ; 
Moored swung the boat beside the shining sea ; 
The arethusas flowered in secrecy, 
And fell, unloved, unsought ; 
Lone the rare cardinal, autumn's herald, stood; 
The bittersweet gleamed red in the deserted wood. 



XXIV 

One watch was ours ; far o'er the ebbing sea, 

Heavy and dark, the rainy shadows lay ; 
From his famihar door he walked with me 

To that broad hill, grown dear in boyhood's day. 
The old field-trodden way ; 
Chill rose the mists, and faint the distant roar 
Of ocean sounded ; our old seat we took 
Silent and sad ; cold autumn's dying look 
The summer landscape wore ; 
We minded not — in our hearts shadows were 
The wide earth harbors not, housing their misery there. 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 211 

XXV 

The Hour sprang forth from universal time, 

Of his joy-hearted race the last sad Hour ; 
Crowned heir of all his brothers of the prime, 
Bodied more nobly, girt with secret power, 
Starred with love's passion-flower ; 
Through night he sprang, and black the flakes of gloom 
Fled, afar off, the lustre of his feet ; 
Our hill he sought, and made the darkness sweet, 
Staying the wand of doom ; 
And dear as from the Grail's all-precious sight, 
Grace from his presence flowed, and fell on us as light. 

XXVI 

We seemed to live within the soul alone 

Of sorrow's silent love the loftier mood ; 
The spirit, vibrant to love's perfect tone, 
Sang love that was, more subtly understood, 
In love to be, renewed ; 
And was death hovering there, with shades of woe. 
Round that dear head the sullen frosts confine ? — 
Dear hands, dear lips,dear eyes, I knew thee mine, 
Mine, mine, where'er I go ! 



212 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

The Hour was dead ; we rose, we took our ways, 
Forever lost to sight through all the exiled days. 

XXVII 

O Song, move softly through the laurelled lyre, 

O melancholy music breathing woe ; 
With strains that trembling loose love's wild desire. 
And waft it to its peace, through sorrow go, 
With ocean pauses, slow ! 
Strike nobler notes, O laden as thou art. 
That die not on the ear with dying tones ; 
O, touch the finer chords man's nature owns 
To ease the breaking heart ; 
And harmonies that of the soul partake. 
Heard in the days of joy, in evil days awake ! 

XXVIII 

Heavy is exile wheresoe'er it be ! 

Or where his armored ship's strong bows divide 
Green, empty hollows of the Afric sea. 

Or where my broad-browed prairies, westering 
wide, 
A race of men abide ; 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 213 

And life in exile is a thing of fears, 
A song bereaved of music, a delight 
That sorrow's tooth doth feast on, day and night, 
A hope dissolved in tears, 
A poem in the dying spirit — aught 
Lost to its use and beauty, desolate, idle, naught ! 

XXIX 

Heavy is exile wheresoe'er it be ! 

To miss the sense of love from out the days ; 
To wake, and work, and tire, nor ever see 

Love's glowing eyes suffused with tender rays — 
Darling of human praise ! 
To lose love's ministry from out our life. 

Nor gentle labor know for dear ones wrought. 
When once love lorded the thronged ways of thought, 
And quelled the harsh world strife ; 
To feel the hungering spirit slowly stilled. 
While hours and months and years the barren seasons 
build. 

XXX 

Ever to watch, like an unfriended guest. 
The sun rise up and lead the days through heaven. 



214 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

The silent days, on to the flaming west, 
The unrecorded days, to darkness given, 
Unloved, unwept, unshriven ; 
With our great mother. Earth, to live alone ; 
To clasp in silence Wisdom's moveless knees; 
To fix dumb eyes, that know fate's whelming 
seas, 
On her eternal throne ; 
While better seems it, were the soul sunk deep 
In life's death-mantled pool, sealed in oblivious sleep ! 

XXXI 

" Alas," I cried, beneath the sun-bright sky, 

" What profits it to search what Athens says — 
To heap a little learning ere we die. 

Blind pilgrims, walk the world's deserted ways. 
And lose the living days ; 
To cheat sad memory's self with storied woes ; 
To summon up sweet visions out of books 
Wherein old poets have enshrined love's looks ; 
To seek in pain repose ; 
O, cup of bitterness he too must taste. 
Shut in his homeless ship upon the salt sea-waste ! " 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 215 

XXXII 

What though o'er him the tropic sunset bloom, 

With hyacinthine hues and sanguine dyes, 
And down the central deep's profoundest gloom 
Soft blossoms, fallen from the wreathed skies, 
The seas imparadise? 
With light immingling, colors, dipped in May, 
Through multitudinous changes still endure — 
Orange and unimagined emeralds pure 
Drift through the softened day ; 
"Alas," he whispers, "and art thou not nigh? 
Earth reaches now her height of beauty ere I die." 



And I give answer, — " Would that he were here ! 

Three halos, crescent-horned, of purest grain. 
In shadowless keen ether burning clear, 

In morn's blue eastern depths, a glory, reign, 
Burn brighter, burn, and wane ; 
Never to us," I whisper, " by that strand 
Stepped morn, so diademed upon the sea ; 
Sweet wanderer, joyous shall thy roaming be 
Across this wind-swept land ! 



2i6 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

Urge on thy western flight and die in bliss ! 
On those unsheltered waves his temples didst thou 
kiss." 

XXXIV 

Brief now his voyaging is o'er those far seas, 

By shoal and reef that the lost mariner mock, 
By lands of palm that nurse the poisoned breeze. 
And pillared isles whose foam-girt bases rock 
With the tornado's shock ; 
The branding suns smite down on glassy waves ; 
They sink ; on high strange stars malignant roll. 
The regents of the pale, untravelled pole, 
Whose coasts no mortal braves : 
Why will he on? — Come back, O bleeding heart ! 
O stricken soul, return ! Death hunteth where thou 
art. 

XXXV 

Eager as sea-birds from their bonds set free. 
He sought the ancient harbors of his home ; 

The Southern Cross fell in the frozen sea, 

And stars of gladness, washed in northern foam. 
His boyhood heavens upclomb ; 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 217 

Once more beneath the tender spring he drinks 
The fountains of his youth for which he yearned ; 
The beauty of the shore, Hke love returned, 
Deep in his spirit sinks ; 
The violets linger, wide the laurels bloom — 
Alas, the flowering earth is his eternal tomb ! 

XXXVI 

Moan, melancholy Ocean, he is dead 

In whom thou hadst thy life, thy throbbing joy ! 
Our woe, O melancholy Ocean, shed 
In music round thy ever-strangered boy, 
Whom the blind deeps destroy ! 
Waken, dark pines ! that ruinous eclipse 

Hath broke the tender league of musing youth, 
And shut love's insights and the hopes of truth 
Within his parted Hps ; 
I take, ay me, no welcome from his hands — 
He comes not through the wood, nor down the shadowy 
sands. 

XXXVII 

From him the lone sun doth withhold his light ; 
To him lorn eve her western star denies ; 



2i8 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

But O, a lovelier world hath sunk in night, 
Its music-breathing fields, its dreaming skies, 
Dark in his darkened eyes ; 
The rapturous element is still, in him, 
And all of nature that can perish, dead j 
Oblivion gathers o'er his obscure head ; 
Death binds him, face and limb ; 
Earth -sundered soul, no beauty now he knows, 
Nor sense nor act of love sweetens his long repose. 



XXXVIII 

On crag and beach I hear his threnody ; 

I touch the myrtles clinging round his grave ; 
But weak is all that severs him from me. 

Faint and far off, although my heart will crave 
The old response he gave ; 
No, not the moaning waves nor sighing pines 
Persuade my soul of loss, nor blinding tears — 
1 love him, I shall love through lonely years, 
Where'er my life declines ; 
I lean my head down to the flowerless sod — 
I feel his shepherding as when on earth he trod. 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 219 

XXXIX 

Mortality sways not, while heaven shall last, 

The starry years that were when he was mine ; 
Death blots not out a fair-recorded past, 

Whose meanings deeper are than men divine, 
Who write it, line by line ; 
The years of noble life are pledges deep, 
That bind futurity our souls to friend ; 
Woe cannot cancel them, nor far time end 
The privilege they keep ; 
They live — their light still blessed where it leads. 
Their hoarded music loosed, pure song, in perfect deeds. 

XL 

Yea, he to whom Love was as God is dead ; 

Cold, mute, and dark, he unresponsive lies ; 
A joyless form, the kindling presence fled, 
The spirit faded from his wistful eyes ; 
No more will he arise ! 
Yet not in vain was our adoring trust. 

Our deep-vowed fealty, our service done ; 
To finer issues love that was lives on, 
Nor moulders into dust : 



220 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

Of Love, the Giver, still my song must be, 
The Victor, Love, repeat, whose grace descends on me. 

XLI 

Love blends with mine the spirit I deplore, 

Like music in sweet verse that lasts for aye ; 
While yet we wandered by our native shore. 
He sent the blessings for which all men pray, 
That cannot pass away ; 
He wrought with ministries of star and flower 
And the gray sea, to build our lives secure ; 
He made the sources of the spirit pure, 
And with truth lent us power ; 
And him to me He gave — and lo, his gift 
Is changeless, and doth now my soul from death uplift. 

XLII 

On deepest night arisen, the morning star 
Trembles across the wide, unquiet sea. 

And heavenward springs, with influence felt afar — 
The world's new hope he leads, the day to be. 
The life that waits for me ; 

Speed on, glad star, and golden be thy flight. 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 22 

Inviolable, serene, the waters o'er ! 
Fear not the eclipsing west, O born to soar, 
And, dying, die in light ! 
Bring, bring the morning with her tides of song. 
Her floods of amber air, breaking earth's heights along. 

XLni 

Beauty abides, nor suffers mortal change, 
Eternal refuge of the orphaned mind ; 
Where'er a lonely wanderer, I range. 

The tender flowers shall my woes unbind, 
The grass to me be kind ; 
And lovely shapes innumerable shall throng 
On sea and prairie, soft as children's eyes ; 
Morn shall awake me with her glad surprise ; 
The stars shall hear my song; 
And heaven shall I see, whate'er my road, 
Steadfast, eternal, Hght's impregnable abode. 

XLIV 

Love, too, abides, and smiles at savage death. 

And swifter speeds his might and shall endure ; 
The secret flame, the unimagined breath, 



222 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 

That lives in all things beautiful and pure, 
Invincibly secure ; 
In Him creation hath its glorious birth, 
Subsists, rejoices, moves prophetic on. 
Till that dim goal of all things shall be won 
Men yearn for through the earth ; 
Voices that pass we are of Him, the Song, 
Whose harmonies the winds, the stars, the seas, prolong. 

XLV 

Break, surging sea, about the lovely shore ! 

O dimly heaving plains, through darkness sweep ! 
Thy restless waves, with morning stars roofed o'er. 
Their incommunicable secret keep. 
Impenetrable deep ! 
The eldest years on time's oblivious verge 

Saw thee through tempest-weltering night uplift 
Great, mountainous continents amid thy drift. 
And their tall peaks submerge ; 
The vast, abysmal, wandering fields moved on, 
Whelming the wasteful wreck of the old world undone. 

XLVI 

And still round mortal shores thy billows roll. 
And shall through long, long ages yet unborn ; 



THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 223 

Lone splendor of the sense-illumined soul, 
Eternal moaning of the spirit lorn, 
By strokes of loss outworn ; 
Thy terrors image our blind mortal state, 

Dark with impending doom and whirling woe, 
And monsters in thy bosom come and go, 
And death is thy fell mate ; 
Ah yet, through sun and storm, gray ocean, roll. 
Love clasps thy mighty tides in his profound control. 

XLVII 

Surge on, thy melancholy is not doom ! 

Surge, O wan sea, into the golden day ! 
The morn is breathing off thy purple gloom. 
The isles lift up their promise, dim and gray, 
Love holds his dauntless sway ! 
Thy ripples kiss the shore with lips of foam, 

Thy waves are dawning soft — the winds blow free ! 
Keep thou the eternal watch, O dear, dear sea, 
Those far lands I must roam ! 
Lo, 'tis the sunrise — and the sphered stars move. 
Singing unseen, like silent thoughts through silent love. 



AGATHON 



THE ARGUMENT 

The following dramatic poem takes its origin in that mood of a 
young and sensitive temperament in which the transience of life is 
first perceived, and is most deeply felt in the passing away of beauty; 
to remain in this mood were to despair. But the desire which in 
early youth is fed by mortal loveliness has an eternal object, to the 
perception of which the soul must win, binding round about it new and 
diviner affections. Agathon, the poet of Plato's Symposium, typifies 
such youth; and the poem here discloses his passage to the higher 
conception by means of the Platonic thought and imagery. Diotima, 
the wise preceptress of Socrates, instructs him; Eros, the desire of 
beauty, is his companion and guide; the youth, under the spell of 
Anteros (whose character is taken from the later phases of the Greek 
myth) encounters love in its transient mortal form — Venus Pande- 
mos — but his noble nature perceives therein the essence and con- 
centration of that death which has daunted him in the world; and 
although he feels the impairment of his purity by the fact of his 
temptation, he is led by Eros to the presence of the Uranian Venus, 
who sets forth to him (as Diotima had also done in a prophetic 
manner) the eternal element in which life itself has its ground of 
being. The obligations of the poem to Plato are plain; and for 
those who are familiarized with Platonic ways of thought and the 
ordinary conceptions of philosophic idealism, the poem, perhaps, 
notwithstanding its artistic faults, has no more obscurity than by 
necessity belongs to its matter. The passage of the soul through 
love of the beauty that is seen to love of the beauty that is unseen, 
whereby it escapes from the dominion of time and death in the 
senses, is the theme. 



THE CHARACTERS 

Eros, the god of Desire 

DiOTiMA, the prophetess of Mantineia 

Agathon, the poet 

Phantasm 

Urania, unseen 



SCENE I 

Before Diotima's cave. Eros enters 

Eros 

Between the gods who live and mortal men 
I am the Intercessor, Eros called, 
Fathered in heaven, but earth did mother me; 
Whence is my nature mixed of opposites. 
Unquenchable desire, want absolute, 
And is near neighbor unto human fate. 
The edict of Necessity besides 
Bids own that kinship ; for I come not home 
Except my errand done, which ever is 
To break the mystery of love to men, 
Freeing themselves and me ; not without me 
Find they the Immortals ; without them my wings 
Blade not, nor from the gleaming shoulder break. 
But by the warmth of love those plumes unsheathe ; 
Wherefore I ever speed to win men's hearts. 
229 



230 AGATHON 

I bear the gifts of all the gods to men ; 

The bright Promethean fire burns from my hand, 

And from it falls Demeter's holy corn ; 

Poseidon's horse, Athene's olive tree, 

The plough, the ship, the sceptre, and the lyre 

I grant, and only from my favor lives 

All art and use and ornament of life ; 

And whom I meet, with whatsoever gift 

He wills in his desire I charge his heart. 

The most, low-eyed and basely covetous. 

Scramble in shameful packs for Plutus' hoard, 

To gild their bosoms with a little gold. 

But leave unfurnished all that lies within ; 

And those who flaunt them in a purple cloak, 

And on bright honor fasten greedy eyes, 

Are like unmindful what they most should mind. 

The king who wolfs it in the precious flock 

Forgets the heavenly leasing of his throne ; 

The warrior flaming in his woundless arms 

Forgets their forging in the fiery mount ; 

The victor whose green leaves o'erprize his brows 

Forgets the sacred tree they budded on ; 

Oblivious, the crammed steward, of his lord ; 

The artist, of the beam whence Iris glows ; 



AGATHON 231 

The sculptor, of the form within the stone ; 

The poet, of the very breath he draws ; 

Users of heavenly trust, unmindful all. 

They waste my gifts ; I gave them not from earth 

To nourish life alone, but from the gods 

Who fashioned them to foster the young soul 

In reverence, gratitude, and humbleness. 

Yet some, whose eyes were more divinely touched 

In that long-memoried world whence souls set forth, 

Discern the holy meaning of the gift, 

Which who receives aright receives the god. 

The rest esteem it as a thing their own 

And common, and neglect to know the gods ; 

And me, their messenger, they thrust without ; 

And here I wander in the ways of men. 

Hungry and poor, and begging for my bread ; 

And oft my feet print blood what time I leave 

Inhospitable, hard, and kindless doors. 

But where some noble soul makes his abode, 

And bids me enter in and lodge with him. 

Beautiful am I as the gods in heaven ; 

His thatch, though lowly, unto them is known, 

The rushes of his floor are loved of men. 

And who live there behold me as I am. 



232 AGATHON 

One such I seek for now, the flower of Greece, 
Young Agathon ; to men hereafter known 
(If I but thrive as I have hope to do) 
More than her athlete's ohve-cinctured brows. 
Wrestler, or runner, or swift charioteer, 
His cherished name endears her memory. 
A spirit of joy he is, to beauty vowed. 
Made to be loved, and every sluggish sense 
In him is amorous and passionate. 
Whence danger is ; therefore I seek him out. 
So with pure thought and awe of things divine 
To touch his soul that he partake the gods. 
Now here he comes with that wise prophetess 
Who reared his youthful wisdom ; I, awhile, 
Will stand and mark them ; sweet is their discourse. 

[Eros retires. 

DiOTiMA and Agathon enter, and seat themselves near 
the cave 

DiOTIMA 

What robs thee, Agathon, of thy delight, 
That thou art fallen in grave and silent ways. 
Nor longer wilt divide thy breast with me ? 



AGATHON 233 

Agathon 
I would obey the gods, but see not how. 

DiOTIMA 

Hast thou forgotten ? But youth ever fears, 
And, Hke the fledgUng on the low nest's edge, 
Thinks not how instant heaven receives its wings 
And bears them up unseen. The reed once knew 
Thy boyish warble ; long the lyre expects 
When thou shalt touch Apollo's waiting strings. 
Thy name be golden on the lips of men. 
Not idly do the gods bestow their gifts. 

Agathon 

Long silent hangs the lyre, silent my heart. 

I cannot sing ; I am too much betrayed 

By this too fickle world that robbeth me. 

Beauty herself hath fed me on despair ; 

And the deep change which doth infect all things 

Lessons the soul in death, by beauty taught 

More than by gross decay. Change, change is here ! 

Still seems the region as the land I loved — 

Seems, but is not ; something hath fallen between. 

Strangeness and severance that the exile feels 



234 AGATHON 

Returning to his haunts from roving years ; 
No stay for him is there ; he turns and goes ; 
For he has robbed his father's quiet fields 
Of Nature's sweet horizons ; nevermore 
The sky shall rest upon the hills for him ; 
His bounds are of the soul ; his rims of heaven 
The visions which his wayward eyes have caught ; 
And what that gleam hath whispered to his heart 
He cannot all forget. This have I learned 
From the revolving hours, and fear it much, 
And hide it in my breast, as wise men do. 
Lest truth should prove contagion to the world. 
Woe be to us, to us alone the woe ! 
The solitude in loveliest places felt. 
The heart estranged from earth, but undivine, 
The soul aware of that which heaven withholds — 
Poets whose eyes the goddess lights and blinds, 
To be than mortals more, but less than gods ! 

DiOTIMA 

Hath beauty so bereaved thee, nor love crowned? 

Agathon 
Thou knowest it, because thou smilest so ; 
Yet pity in that smile confession makes 



AGATHON 23s 

Of thoughts not unacquainted with my own. 

I do remember 'twas on such a night 

As spreads this silver silence on the earth 

On the sea-cape I watched the brooding wave ; 

Only the moon my meditation shared, 

Nor any sound save of the voiceful deep 

Among the white crags of my solitude ; 

I saw its lovehness, and sighed to see; 

And stretching out my palms to the bright air, 

"Wherefore art thou so beautiful, my life ?" 

I cried ; and knew in heaven a subtle change, 

Celestial fading, and the pale approach 

Of morning in the east ; and all my thoughts 

Fled thence, as from the gray dawn fled the stars. 

The time was disenchanted, not my soul ; 

And oft on some clear height, some curving shore, 

From beauty's momentary trance I woke 

As from another world ; flown was the light 

That wooed me to such sweet oblivion, 

But not from memory flown ; still must I mourn 

That every lovely thing escapes the heart 

Even in the moment of its cherishing. 

O young regret that still will turn desire ! 

For Nature wounds and orphans while she charms - 



236 AGATHON 

Her dearest lover ; no perfection hers, 

And no continuance ; change, forever change ! 

Stars shine where morning was, morn dims the stars ; 

Spring follows spring, and all our autumns roll 

Morrow on morrow mourning yesterday ; 

So mutable is this dissolving sphere ; 

Aloft and under — change, forever change ! 

And we like sailors on the inconstant deep — 

The moon-driven rack, the rout of wind-swept waves, 

Are earth and heaven ; the whole world slips below. 

DiOTIMA 

Truth is not given as pearls, my Agathon. 
There is a light within, and that must shine 
Before the soul can see ; o'er Nature's world, 
The flux and all the ruin of her sway, 
Is the eternal ; there the gods abide. 

Agathon 

The gods are hard to seek, but sure they are. 
I have not yet my boyhood so unlearned 
But with my soul I keep some privacy ; 
Such as each spirit owns what time it wakes 
And broods and ponders on what things must be 



AGATHON 237 

To match its nature ; then what thoughts were mine ! 

Desire and dream were undissevered then ! 

I rode the dark-ribbed waves, Poseidon's son ; 

The ample ether kissed me, sprung from Zeus ; 

Apollo wrapt me in his golden beams 

Like some proud elder brother ; as a star 

Upon the unregarded edge of heaven 

Knows not his brethren of the crowded host, 

Before their beauty timorous, yet feels 

His isolate nature one with theirs divine, 

So my young spirit felt beyond the sense 

Something at one with it that made the world 

Its shining element — O, wherefore bright 

Unless the gods, making such glad proclaim. 

Would break their secrecy through Nature's tongues, 

And unprofaned do borrow of the soul 

Some sweet forewarnings? — upon this I mused. 

When morning flashed on great Athene's spear, 

Pacing within her temple. On one hand 

The violet landscape through the columns glowed — 

^gina and the olive-coasted gulf 

Empurpling to the far Corinthian gleam ; 

Ilissus reed-beloved ; Hymettus flowering ; 

On white Pentelicus the cloud-hung pines ! 



238 AGATHON 

At every step more fair with lovelier change 

The scene passed by, in those white columns framed, 

Porches of heaven ; upon the other side 

Was I o'ershadowed by the eternal frieze, 

That, only seemed to move, but ever stayed, 

Horsemen and maidens in the marble march, 

Athene's people, bearing evermore 

Praise to Athene ; beautiful they stood 

Before her coming, mixed with forms divine — 

Men worthy to be gods, gods to be men ; 

And waking from my trance, I saw them shine, 

Nor knew the change from the eternal world. 

DiOTIMA 

'Tis the god's doing : O, follow, follow there ! 

Create what thou desirest, Agathon. 

Cling not to Nature ; of eternity 

Some glimpses live that counsel the divine 

In the brief shadows of this mortal being. 

The light that fills the temple thence proceeds ; 

And all the Phidian art and mastery 

Is but the spirit bringing like the gods 

The light it shines by ; only it creates 

And truly fashions ; Nature's works decay ; 



AGATHON 239 

It hath a higher and immortal craft ; 

It is the parent of eternal form. 

Not in the sphere the song that moves it sings, 

But in the soul ; 'tis Nature's element, 

Her shaping principle, her other frame, 

Locking old Chaos in the rhyme of law ; 

Its influence exceeds this sensual reach ; 

It doth invest the very gods with charm ; 

Such deity resides within the soul. 

O, wert thou Orpheus, or the shepherd boy 

Apollo loved amid his Thracian flocks, 

Thy lyre must from thyself bring harmony, 

Whose unlocked music builds the world divine. 

Agathon 
One must be bom again to breathe that world. 

DiOTIMA 

Not once, but many times the soul is born 
Before the mortal body wastes away 
That it inhabits ; it is born in sense, 
And like a thing of Nature in what is 
Lives momentary ; born in memory next. 
In time's dark shadow and eclipse it builds 



240 AGATHON 

The insubstantial world where Nature hath 

Her only immortality ; nor long 

Consents to tarry with that second death, 

And to eternize loss ; but, risen aloft. 

Is in imagination born, whose throe 

Is Nature's dissolution. Nature dies 

In uttering the ideal ; earth below 

Is stubble, stars the refuse of the thought, 

That works in time and death, denying both 

And all the world of change, and winnows thence 

The inviolable and perfect element. 

And sees the gods afar. But more remains. 

This but the darkness dreaming in the mind 

And increate creation ; for the soul 

Works not its dream ; yet through belief it may 

If it believe ; such premonition hath 

The quick eternal nature in it lodged — 

Immortal travail, thoughts that at their birth 

Have touches of necessity, and shape 

Themselves the Hfe to come ; in faith 'tis born ; 

In what shall be it breathes, till that last change 

When it shall lay its mortal nature off, 

In what eternal is, eternal live. 



AGATHON 241 

Agathon 

O, eloquent and noble as desire 
Thy doctrine is, charming as melody ; 
Beyond the reach of thought we follow it^ 
Whither, oh, whither? 

DiOTIMA 

Here repose thyself 
Upon the flinty rock, the dreamer's couch ; 
For oft in dreams the gods do visit us — 
Or what seem dreams — and then we wake and find 
Only the ideal has reality. 

[DiOTiMA enters the cave, Agathon sleeps. 

Eros comes fo7"ward singing. Agathon wakes 

When love in the faint heart trembles, 

And the eyes with tears are wet, 
O, tell me what resembles 

Thee, young Regret? 
Violets with dewdrops drooping, 

Lilies o'erfull of gold, 
Roses in June rains stooping, 

That weep for the cold, 

Are like thee, young Regret. 



242 AGATHON 

Bloom, violets, lilies, and roses ! 

But what, young Desire, 
Like thee, when love discloses 

Thy heart of fire ? 
The wild swan unreturning. 

The eagle alone with the sun, 
The long-winged storm-gulls burning 

Seaward when day is done, 

Are like thee, young Desire. 

Agathon 

Who art thou that dost echo on thy lips 

The unspoken heart that pains with silent throb 

And thoughts ineffable the aching side? 

Eros 

A wanderer who sings from land to land ; 
A single night he lodges where he sings, 
And goes ere morning. Subtle is the song 
And sweet ; which, if thy heart shall entertain, 
'Tis destiny, eternal joy or woe. 

Agathon 

There is a princely pleading in thy looks, 
Yet doth this fair-demeanored courtesy 



AGATHON 243 

Show with a borrowed favor, as if a god, 

With lowly bending of his attributes 

And gentle usage of humility, 

Should be a suppliant. So Apollo once 

Among the herdsmen came, but godhke sang. 

Eros 
A god I am, though mortal now I seem. 

Agathon 

I have heard tales of gods who mixed with men 

When men were heroes and divinely sprung ; 

But whether by compulsion of strict fate 

Or by corruption of our long descent. 

The way is lost, and scarce may Hermes' self 

Retrace his golden sandals' gleaming track 

To guide us hence, whence all the gods are gone. 

Eros 

Not gone from thee or any mortal man 

Who trusts them, though of pride-emboldened eyes 

They suffer not the near and curious gaze ; 

But whom they love they leave not uninspired. 

I am their messenger, and joy I bring. 



244 AGATHON 

Long have I sought, and loved thee ere I saw ; 
Now take my heart of longing to thy breast ; 
Suffer my leading : I alone lead true, 
And strip the ambush on the paths of peril, 
And hedge the flowery way with innocence. 
Eros I am, the wooer of men's hearts. 
Unclasp thy lips, yield me thy close embrace ; 
So shall thy thoughts once more to heaven climb, 
Their music linger here, the joy of men. 

Agathon 

Take my poor friending, such as man may give 
Whose only having is a human heart ; 
This be thy pillow and thy breast my guard, 
Both loyal lovers till the world shall end ! 
For thou dost seem all mortal, and dost crave 
An equal bond ; and far that journey lies 
(So strong is prescience here), and long, alas, 
Hath that young trust that was about my heart 
Flown forth, the bird of roaming, through the world ■ 
Oft lost in heaven, oft fluttering back to earth, 
Builds in the morn and nests in darkening waves, 
The tired wing not vain, nor vain the song. 
And now my soul must follow after it, 



AGATHON 245 

Going with thee ; with thee needs must I go ; 
For had one planet launched our lives at birth, 
And had one sun harnessed our golden days, 
And one dear memory shrined our jewels up. 
Thou couldst not more prevail. O, thou hast ta'en 
My heart into thy breast ; my faith lies there, 
And I must follow ! 

Thy kisses make me faint, 
And, tremulously sweet, ambrosial flame 
Steals in my blood, with heavenly vigor bright. 
Upon what stream shall this high passion slake ? 
Not sun-kissed wine that bursts the blooded grape, 
Cold Castaly, nor any nectared draught 
That whispers Hebe's secret, shall dull this pain. 
Nor any dark-leaved herb of melancholy 
Lull it to sleep. 

Eros 

There is a fount more clear 
Than gave Narcissus to himself, more pure 
Than on Tiresias flashed Athene's form. 
And softer to the touch than Venus' bath. 
If thou canst win unto that crystal brook, 
And if but once thy lips kiss that bright flow, 



246 AGATHON 

Was never Beauty's paragon more blessed, 
Nor Wisdom's lover so by her desired, 
Nor darling Adon to the goddess dear. 
While this sweet passion sorrows in thy breast 
Unto that heavenly fount thou'rt each day nigh ; 
There shalt thou learn the mystery of thyself. 
How thou art mortal to become a god. 
But now the night wears on, and long the way. 

Agathon 
How short a time thou givest to my love ! 

Eros 

Nor long, nor short ; but when I go from thee 
The interval is all ; against that hour 
Whisper thy heart into my breast to-night, 
And I in turn will treasure mine in thee. 

[_They enter the cave together. 



AGATHON 247 



SCENE II 

Diotima's cave within. Agathon and Eros enter 

Agathon 

How hast thou stolen within my heart ! even there, 

Sweet fabler, fable on, with myth and tale 

That thronged before the eyes of poets gone ! 

O, only once to breathe young Attic air, 

Cithaeron rove, or Ida's slumber know, 

A guiltless Paris by ^none's side ! 

Dream thou, my heart ! for Love so made our frame 

And shut his empire in a maid's white arms, 

And in a woman's kiss his sovereignty. 

For this Poseidon hath his trident bowed ; 

For this great Zeus let the leashed thunder sleep 

And the bird drowse beside the empty throne ; 

For this did Enna blossom, and with strewn spring 

Love's footprints bud in hell ; even but for this 

Did Dian's self lay her white bow aside 

And hush a thousand hymns of sanctity ! 



248 AGATHON 

Love comes in youth, and in the wakeful heart 
DeHght begins, soft as Aurora's breath 
Fretting the silver waves, and dimly sweet 
As stir of birds in branches of the dawn. 
So soft, so sweet, thy touches round my heart. 
O, fable, fable on ! 

Eros 

I fable not, 
But as the sense is fashioned sees the mind, 
And as the tongue is languaged hears the ear, 
And as the heart is chambered lives the soul ; 
Illusion binds us ! \_The scetie darkens. 

Alas, he hears me not, 
And by the darkening of the way I know 
Anteros, him, my brother, born with me, 
Who will contest for this most noble prize. 
His bright enchantment oft my image steals 
And silences my voice ; and power is his ; 
Whatever loveliness doth dwell in sense 
Ministers to him, many gentle thoughts, 
Fair shapes, forever beautiful to man. 
And dear with tenderness that touches most 



AGATHON 249 

Pure hearts and young. Look down, sweet heaven, now. 
And nearer bend thy light, and shine within ! 

\_The scene brightens disclosing, as the two advance, 

what seems a lake under the cave's high-vaulted 

rock. 

Agathon 

Darkness itself doth change ; and in my breast 

Expectancy doth like a spirit sit 

And helms me on ; and deep within my heart 

Is such unrest, that sweetens as it grows. 

Excess makes nature faint. Now might I hear 

The music of the bright Sicilian reef, 

Caught over heaving seas by mariners lost, 

The sea-child's harp of joy; or whatso else 

Is storied in the tales of mortal love, 

Of dragon-damsels in the woodland met, 

Or river-maidens in their golden hair. 

The dark way flames ; the gross and threatening rock 

As the fair element doth softly burn 

With violet rays, whose stealing lambency 

Subdues these awful ledges up aloft, 

Melting with darkness there ; and, isled below, 

This chasm of radiance, this bloom of light. 



250 AGATHON 

This purple fragment of crag-shadowed seas 
Where Naiads slumber ! Grottoes 'neath the wave, 
Where the unbodied spirit of the air 
Laves his blue lustre in the sunless stream, 
Dissolve such hues ; such still ethereal tints 
Within their sapphire caves the glaciers hush, 
Light's mountain hermitage ; and, soft-embarked, 
What vision pulses on the brightening air ? — 

[ The Phantasm appears floating upon the lake. 
How fair she lies within the purple shell, 
Couched in the halo of a golden mist 
That drops its pale light o'er her flowing limbs ! 

The Phantasm 

'Tis sweet to roam ; O, sweet in breaking dawns 
To speak with Light, the pilgrim beautiful ; 
To hear and follow with earth's roaming soul ! 
The winged winds forsake their craggy nests ; 
The singing birds take flight and glow in air ; 
The pale mists slip their golden anchorage ; 
The white clouds lead them on ; for all the gates 
Of heaven stand open. Who would linger then? 
The sweetest roamer is a boy's young heart ; 
Sweet is his roaming, for his heart is young. 



AGATHON 251 

O youngest Roamer, Hesper shuts the day, 
White Hesper folded in the rose of eve ; 
The still cloud floats, and kissed by twilight sleeps ; 
The mists drop down, and near the mountain moor ; 
And mute the bird's throat swells with slumber now ; 
And now the wild winds to their eyries cling. 

The youth divine, — where now lays he his head ? 
The sea roves on, and rove the awful stars. 
Unalterable as when the young gods woke 
And alien gazed upon the mystery 
That hopes not nor remembers, with strange eyes ; 
And he, too, gazes, and his heart still roves. 

Ah, dark he roams whom sea and stars waft on 
To voyage and venture, and to peril all. 
Still wandering with the silver-footed waves, 
Still coursing with the globes of fiery flight, 
A mortal he, but they eternal are. 

Now where for him shall end the darkening search, 
Whose feet are bound with sandals of the dust? 
The waste desire be his, and sightless fate : 
Him light shall not revisit ; late he knows 
The love that mates with heaven weds in the grave. 

O youngest Roamer, wonderful is joy, 
The rose in bloom that out of darkness springs, 



252 AGATHON 

The lily folded to the wave of life, 
The lotus on the stream's dark passion borne ; 
'Tis hidden far from dawn, and shut from eve ; 
The shore wave never kissed ; the starless bower. 

Ah, fortunate he roams who roameth there, 
Who finds the happy covert and lies down, 
And hears the laughter gurgling in the fount, 
And feels the dreamy light imbathe his limbs. 
No more he roams ; he roams no more, no more. 

Agathon 

How sweet a freight of beauty lieth here ! 

And like a god I hover over it. 

So Bacchus hung where Ariadne lay ; 

So Ariadne unto Bacchus' arms 

Gave her white breasts with upward streaming eyes. 

And me, though mortal, the swift flame devours. 

And winds with sparkles of immortal heat 

In my quick veins, and finds sweet pasture there. 

Alas, her parted lips, how still they smile ! 

Her soft, immobile face, her calling gaze ! 

Now from me fall the whole world's memory, 

And hang henceforth, my thoughts, your starlight here ! 

What art thou, — speak ! — like Aphrodite lying, 



AGATHON 



253 



In mystery clad and raiment of desire? 

Yet speak not ; so thy silence is more sweet 

Even than thy song, I would not have thee speak. 

Still as the light that streams from thee, gaze on. 

Sunning thy treasures in thy tresses' gold ! 

O, thou art lovely, maiden, thou art fair, 

But to be loved is more than to be fair. 

Lift up thy eyes to mine, look with the soul, 

And in light reach me ! 

\_The Phantasm reveals itself. Agathon starts back, 

and the Phantasm changes, sinking, as the cave 

darkens. 

'Tis not thee, not thee ! 
It is not thee I serve ! O thou one face 
That art the sweetness of my thousand dreams, 
Beam on me, and uncharm these hoodless orbs ! 
Ah, base, base, base ! I saw the nether fire 
Dilated glow, with expectation ripe, 
The brutish spark ! O Eros, art thou gone ? 
Didst thou not mark it, like a meteor globed. 
Glance down the blue rift and low-eddying gleam 
Deep-whirled? And in its fiery womb I saw 
The twisted serpent ringing woe obscene, 
And far it Ht the pitchy ways of hell ! 



254 



AGATHON 

Alas, that horror ! Eros, Eros, Eros — 

I cannot find thee. [AcATHON/aZ/j-. 

Eros sings 

In waste places of the night 
Joy once wandered out of light, 
And when he parted thence on high 
The Desolation heard her first-born's cry ; 
Yet another birth was nigh, 
Hell-engendered, lean and scant, 
In the starved womb of Want. 
Eros, born the elder, I ; 
Anteros, he ; at one same birth 
Nourished at the breasts of Dearth. 
Oft our pathways cross on earth, 
Though we seek a different goal, 
For the way lies through the soul. 
Oft he wrestles, might and main, 
To break the palm-branch in my hand ; 
In the torch-race oft doth strain 
To quench in dust my burning brand ; 
But my strength from heaven derives, 
Victor stays, howe'er he strives. 



AGATHON 25s 

Another fortune with the sons of men 
His hazardous encounter hath ; 
Safer the Lern^ean den, 
Or old Scylla's toothed wrath, 
To wayfarer or hehnsman of the wave ; 
So many thousands find in him the grave. 
By avenues of soft approach. 
And fair dehghts to high-placed fortune due, 
Upon prosperity doth he encroach ; 
Seeming all sympathy and sorrow true, 
With wretchedness its fallen pride doth rue. 
And some poor betterment as falsely show ; 
But all in general wreck doth ever overthrow. 
So fond is man, though seeming wise. 
From his own heart to spin fair lies, 
And, by himself deluded, worst slavery to endure ; 
Nor any truth were now kept bright and pure. 
Nor for a single hour 
Were man secure 

Against that secret, sullen, undermining tide. 
But, to my strength allied. 
Love stoops from heaven, clad in dismaying power. 

Foolish they are who think him soft. 
The Avenger he ! 



256 AGATHON 

His cloudless throne 

Oft sends the thunder down 

On mortals ; as when Zeus aloft 

Is angered in his heart to see 

Some insolent lord to fulness blown — 

Instant of the Thunderer aware, 

Under his golden seat 

The winged terror at his feet, 

Eagle of god, sun-nurtured, fierce for prey, 

Flashes on the storming cloud 

With beak thrust out and riding pinions loud ; 

Sees, and plunges from the air. 

And, darkening the blaze of day, 

Swoops the offended law ; 

And on the race of men beholding falleth awe. 

Or like to him heroic song once saw 

Leave his bright station on Olympus' crown, 

To Ida coming ; terrible the clang 

Of the full quiver on his armed shoulders rang ; 

Terrible the bowstring sang ; 

Like night the mighty arrow sprang ; 

First on beasts, and then on men ; 

Pestilence did the armies pen ; 

With funeral pyres 



AGATHON 257 

The wide camp smokes and death-choked fires. 

Such things the poets feign 
Of god-inflicted pain ; 
But to the inner eye 
Secret that force and nigh ; 
In the blood implicate, 
In nerve and bone 

The burning serpent, in the heart a stone, 
Invisible fate 

Astonishes, struck with internal rout, 
The body's faculties, and puts them out; 
Dries up the vital lamp ; 
Dissolves the mind's own harmony ; 
Lets madness in, and uncontrolled be ; 
Dismantles virtue's hold ; 

Uncasts, imperial wreck, reason's large mould; 
And in the soul 

Unmints the image of its heavenly stamp ; 
Erases and abolishes the whole. 
O ruin absolute, and not to be withstood 
By the frail mortal brood ! 

Avenging Love ! O, terrible 
The brightness of thy burning stroke 
Illumes the darkness when the victim falls ! 
s 



258 AGATHON 

One moment on his eyeballs broke 

The whole eternal fabric, heaven and hell, 

Thy glory, unsearchable. 

And oft then first descried 

When to the light he died ! 

Yet not to darkness left, 

And utterly bereft. 

If any soul be capable of light ; 

For He, who framed man at His will, 

Did in the inward parts distil 

Such sensible, ethereal force. 

That there immortal sorrows course. 

Not fatal, but with issues bright ; 

Woes of the heart unburdening 

That fondly to this mould will cling ; 

Pangs of the spirit when it dies, 

Yet strives on thoughts of heaven to rise. 

O one true sacrifice ! 

Where never incense upward clomb 

Of holocaust or hecatomb, 

The lone heart shall His secrecy surprise 

Far in the unapparent skies. 

For who hath once known light within. 
And entered on heaven's pilgrimage. 



AGATHON 259 

The under-world, whence souls begin, 
Shall nevermore his steps engage ; 
Though oft he suffer pain, 
In peril seeming lost. 
On darkness tost. 
He shall be found again, 
Light shall to him return. 
So into safety brought. 
And hardly taught 

That souls most beautiful are framed most stern. 
Seeing the black and Stygian flood 
Redden, beneath Love's shafts, in seas of blood. 
And, livid with lightnings of his flame. 
Sink whence it came. 

Leaving its wrecks along the mortal shore. 
With wiser praise 
He shall the paean raise. 

And Love, the Avenger, sing, who saves him, evermore. 

[Agathon wakes. 

Agathon 

And art thou here ? and dost thou love me still. 
As when thou didst confide thyself to me ? 
Then leapt my heart up at thy darling name, 



26o AGATHON 

That slipped on that dark air, as slips a star j 
But whether more of mystery or of light 
It yields, beauty or sorrow has, who knows ? 
O, yet one moment in the darkness here 
Bend thy full soul on mine ! So lovers' eyes 
Gaze on each other lost, and suffer all ! 

Eros 

The cords of birth do not so strictly bind. 
The bonds of Nature are less absolute 
Than our communion : be not thou afraid ; 
I cannot leave thy side until the soul 
That passions in thee gives me to my peace ; 
Only through thee I come unto the gods. 

Agathon 

I know how strong are forged love's bright links 
Where virtue is, and truth, and innocence; 
My heart has no such metal ; and thou, alas, 
How near thy eyes see my mortality ! 

Eros 
Be not distrustful, nor with shame o'ercome 
Whom sin o'ercame not ; in thy secrecy. 
All bare and open to the god's pure sight, 



AGATHON 261 

And naked as the desert to the sun 

He every part surveys, there truest known 

Where Hght is most ; for oft dishonored here, 

Defeated and given o'er (since wisest men 

Discern but Httle in another's life, 

And scarce themselves dare judge), the soul stands there 

In garlanded and sweet-hymned victory. 

Lovely, and oft majestic after pain. 

It is the fool that judges ; so judge not thou, 

But rather from the judgments of high heaven 

Bethink thee how to pluck eternal law. 

Let not dejection on thy heart take hold 

That Nature hath in thee her sure effects, 

And beauty wakes desire. Should Daphne's eyes, 

Leucothea's arms and clinging white caress. 

The arch of Thetis' brows, be made in vain? 

Beauty is universal nature's lure ; 

The gods themselves from beauty seek increase ; 

The fiery soul is natured like the gods. 

And hath like motions, and therein is fixed 

Immortal generation : whence in it 

Creative passion and divine desire 

That suffer not to mate with mortal things, 

But beauty equal to eternal date 



262 AGATHON 

It seeks, and finds it in the virgin soul. 
Love giveth not his flame to rosy cheeks, 
Nor to the oratory of bright eyes 
Yields his commission up, nor to the Hps 
That breathe his vows renders his constancy ; 
But where the spirit within doth live insphered 
In noble thoughts, fair actions, and kind words, 
He is enthroned, with mutual hearts conjoined 
In virtue, courtesy, and married lives 
That so uniting more with heaven unite. 
He is not fit to love that knows not this. 

Agathon 

This was the beam that chastened my young eyes 
In early visitation found and loved. 
And beauty's first surprisal ; loving it. 
That love in me conquered the lower love. 
Yet something will intrude ; though found at last, 
That dear response and union of the soul, 
Though held secure against time's disarray, 
(So clearer shines the eternal ornament,) 
Death snatches all, and bears it underground, 
Where weeps Persephone, and at the gates 
The golden lute of Orpheus shattered lies. 



AGATHON 263 

Eros 

The wisest doctrine darkens near the grave ; 

On Nature and thy frame of mystery 

Where truth works nearest, ground thy faith the same. 

Nature seeks only Hfe ; where vigor is 

Beauty implants and joy, that measure life 

Flowing and ebbing ; thence her art secretes 

The loaded seeds and vessels of her force 

Ere falls the prime in ugliness and pain, 

Death incomplete, and ashy death at last ; 

She with new bursts mocks mutability. 

And stays her shifting empire. In fair things 

There is another vigor, flowing forth 

From heavenly fountains, the glad energy 

That broke on chaos, and the outward rush 

Of the eternal mind ; and as they share 

In this they to the soul are beautiful. 

It bendeth not, nor lower will converse 

Than with that perfect and eternal being 

Which beauty portions ; hence the poet's eye 

That mortal sees creates immortally 

The hero more than men, not more than man, 

The type prophetic ; hence in marble shines 

The god, but never down Olympus' slopes 



264 AGATHON 

Nor in Idalian meadows stepped so proud 

In grace, joy, love, beauty, and majesty. 

Thus beauty, as the Graces throwing gifts 

On Aphrodite make her visible, 

Endues immortal substance and unveils 

The bright original, in all things bright. 

But only in the reason seen divine. 

And there adored in present deity. 

And dream not this the dreaming of the mind. 

The soul hath its own order, and its laws, 

Strict in its element as Nature's bond. 

Are heavenly regents of its destined course ; 

They bend the future to the thing to be. 

And in the accomplished hour disburden fate. 

Wisdom is but their foretaste ; obeying them, 

(And what is virtue but obeying them ?) 

Thou leaguest with heaven's will, its nursling thou. 

And of its purposes the choicest part ; 

So shall thy soul be grappled round with fate, 

And on the centre stayed thy fabric stand. 

To trust thyself is half thy victory : 

The soul that doubteth, it doth daily die. 

Thou knowest ; and clearer proof to thee I bring. 

The light and language in thyself o'erheard. 



AGATHON 265 

Showing the way and passport to the god. 
Thou knowest it the circle of thy wits — 
From beauty all things have their origin ; 
In virtue permanence ; consummation seek 
Only in love ; thy soul the witness is. 

Agathon 
Glimpses at times the heavenly spark in me 
Hath shed, nor now first heard I know the soul. 
But O, too feeble faith is, self-derived, 
Self-seeking, on the little round of self 
Narrowly based ! but rather unto Truth, 
As to Parnassus' bare and calling height. 
Should leap the bright ascent ; or as the sun, 
His burning rays advancing gloriously. 
Moves with immeasurable azure sphered 
And golden empire of his unbraved beam, 
The soul should make the heaven through which it moves 
And in its own light chariot its course. 
Is there no other Way? 

Eros 

Another Way there is. 
So have I heard ; not yet the gates unlock. 
And O, not thine the praise, dear Mount of Joy, 



266 AGATHON 

That heard'st the world's first music ; not by thee, 
Nor o'er thy married peaks, the Way to heaven ! 
Deep sinks the gulf; the rushing breath thereof, 
O Delphian, had rent thy oracle ! 
O, then, what mortal lips shall frame the word ? 
Who dare the cleft? What god shall he invoke 
Save the eternal will that lies on him? 
He bears the burden of man's broken hopes ; 
Sorrowing he goes and treads the paths of loss ; 
As far as falls the gulf with whirling fate 
His soul must follow. Not with him go I, 
The heaven-climber ; but one companions him, 
O, how unlike to me, Divine Desire, 
Whose pathway leaves eternaj light behind ; 
To me, O, how unhke, Child of the god ! 
'Tis Love himself — so is it noised above — 
Shall wear mortality beneath these stars. 
And, journeying, that Way of Sorrow show ; 
He smooths the dark descent, and goes before. 
Not yet He comes. 

Agathon 

A mystery thou speakest 
That yet familiar to the heart of man 



AGATHON 267 

Seems truth most native to his breast who loves 
And knows what Love is. I did praise him once ; 
Called him the youngest of the gods ; most blest ; 
The tenderest ; the nestler in soft hearts ; 
Most just, who neither does nor suffers wrong ; 
The bravest, Ares' tamer ; in temperance first. 
Who ruleth all desires, all passions quells ; 
The best beloved, darling of gods and men. 
Before he came in heaven were chains and wounds, 
Revolts, dethronements, mutilations, wrecks. 
Old realms defrauded and the new defiled, 
Necessity's hard reign ; but he brought in 
Sweetness and peace, and in smooth order set 
The empire of the gods, and gave them gifts : 
The throne to Zeus and to the Muses song ; 
Apollo's healing and divining art, 
Hephaestus' forge, Athene's loom, thank him ; 
Out of his loins is every good thing sprung ; 
Inventor and inspirer, wise in works ; 
Suggester of fair shapes ; persuasion's lips ; 
The poet whose touch makes all men poets be, 
And hearts that had no music breathe it forth ; 
And fame he gives, making all art beloved. 
He fills men with afl"ection, voids their hate ; 



268 AGATHON 

He maketh them to meet at friendly feasts, 

At sacrifice and dance, the priest, the lord ; 

Kindness supplies, unkindness banishes ; 

Friendship he gives, and forgives enmity ; 

Joy of the good and wonder of the vv'ise, 

The gods' amazement ; most desired by those 

Who have him not, and precious unto whom 

He is their better part ; softness and grace, 

Delicacy, luxury, fondness, and desire. 

His children are ; he's careful of the good, 

But of the evil mindeth not at all ; 

In every word and deed, in hope and fear, 

The pilot, comrade, helper, saviour, he ; 

The glory of the gods, the praise of men, 

The leader best and brightest ! in choral march 

Let each man in his footsteps following tread, 

And honoring him sing sweetly the sweet strain 

With which Love charms the souls of gods and men ! 

Eros 

Fragrant thy praise is and immortal-hymned ; 
This breath of thine, this little golden breath, 
When Athens lies behind like Babylon, 
Shall be love's censer ! Delphi shall be mute, 



AGATHON 269 

Athene's \visdom oracled in stone 

Be shattered ; in another country then 

(Though desert now and roaring seas between) 

Thou shalt be loved ; such charm the Muses give. 

But look lest thou their bright occasions lose. 

The poet's heart is a wise counsellor ; 

O — for thou canst — invoke Urania now, 

That she through song may yield thee thy desire. 

Agathon sings 

Muse of the eternal tune, 

O'erhead in Nature's starry rune ; 

Whom mortals in themselves discern 

By thoughts that from thy fingers bum ; 
And the heart divinely falls 
To native hymns and madrigals ! 

Thou, the Wisdom of the sphere, 

Whom most by inward sight we fear. 

Since souls o'erwrought through thee may pierce 

The violet-girdled universe; 

And the truth to us be given 
With the shining 't hath in heaven ! 



2 70 AGATHON 

Sacred passion seizes me 
Through love of the divinity ; 
Oft upon my eyelids stream 
Bright visions of thy borrowed beam ; 

Hear, and have me in thy grace ; 

Thee I implore to see Love's face ! 



Urania, unseen 

To man's spirit-visioned eye, 
As the robeless world doth lie 
To the sun when clouds disperse, 
Unsheltered lies the universe. 
Hoar Nature's solitary heir. 
He looks on earth and sea and air ; 
Thought's empire-making word he wills. 
The great domain responsive thrills ; 
Break from the bases of the earth 
The fire-scrawled legends of their birth ; 
Flash sun and planet, wheel in wheel. 
Nor dare the central poise conceal ; 
And dateless stars of Chaldee stay 
His subtler influence to obey. 
The viewless pulses of keen force 



AGATHON 271 

Traverse their ethereal course ; 
Beneath his eye their films withdraw j 
He sees the essences of law. 
What he knows a fragment is 
Of what destiny maketh his ; 
Even beyond hope's chmbing border 
Unknown worlds shall Science order ; 
Her dominions distance far 
The lone ray of the outer star. 

Yet to her is set a bound, 
Nor words divine by her are found. 
Nature will not cast for thee 
The starry robe of deity. 
Mortal, rack her nerves no more, 
Nor in her frame the god explore ! 
Her tongues of fire forget the word 
In star-song nor in sea-chime heard, 
Nor on Dodona's sacred breeze. 
Go, sift with light the Pleiades ; 
And clothe anew the fossil bone ; 
Of force, resolve the monotone ; 
Weigh, number, chart, infer, and sum — 
Not from without the god will come. 
Never through the senses' portal 



2 72 AGATHON 

Gleamed that Power, of all the source, 
The large-libertied Immortal 
Who inhabits Fate and Force. 
Nature has no path to him, 
But rather shows man, dumb and dim, 
Back to himself her mazes wind 
And laws of things are laws of mind. 
He the conscious Being only 
Of the world whereon he gazes ; 
He the sceptred sovereign lonely 
In whose state its glory blazes ! 

Yet, look home : there shalt thou find, 
Orb in orb, eternal mind. 
Nought is knowledge but the light 
Unsealing thy immortal sight. 
Nought is beauty but the eye 
Led captive by divinity. 
For truth divine is life, not lore. 
Creative truth, and evermore 
Fashions the object of desire 
Through love that breathes the spirit's fire. 
It loves, and loving grows more bright, 
And, changing to its own delight. 
Doth ever in itself express 



AGATHON 273 

And image the god's loveliness. 
Love beauty, and thy soul grows fair ; 
Love wisdom, virtue harbors there ; 
Love love, the god thou canst not miss — 
Within thy heart his secret is. 
The spark within, the self- fed flame, 
From those twin hands of blessing came, 
That cast the massy earth's blue round 
And in man's bosom virtue found. 
Thy acre of eternal fate 
Is broad enough to bear thy weight ; 
Take thou the scope the god doth give, 
And fear not from the heart to live ! 

Behold the sacred words I sing 
Are but thy spirit laboring : 
So near the nameless mystery lies, 
Revealed, though hidden, to thy eyes ; 
The vision seen, its form and light 
Are only with thy shining bright ; 
Unveiling him, I unveil thee, 
And bare thy inmost privacy. 

[Agathon, entranced, sinks as in sleep. 



274 AGATHON 

Eros sings 

Tranced now his eyelids be 
Seals of light and secrecy ; 
Slumber, poet, and still keep 
Golden vigils in thy sleep. 
And, waking, bring the world divine 
Through thy opening eyes to shine ! 

Now I leave mortality ; 
This dear heart has set me free, 
Through the sacred passion burning 
That denotes his home-returning. 
Where the gods in joy recline, 
And the sphere is all divine. 
Here I scatter ere I go 
Thoughts that in white lilies blow, 
Hopes that in sweet violets breathe, 
Memory, the starred moss beneath ; 
These for Agathon shall be 
Wreaths of earthly victory. 
But to heaven I ascend, 
And better there the soul befriend, 
With the glad gods interceding, 
Till again my pinions greet 
The young hearts that love my leading. 



AGATHON 27s 

Dear as Hermes' ivory feet 
Down the purple ether steering, 
To the souls in prison nearing, 
With the holy meadow's bloom ; 
I shall touch them in the gloom, 
And, starlike, from my bending eyes, 
The sweet beam of divine surprise 
Shall in a moment teach them more 
Than all the worlds of light before. 



276 AGATHON 



SCENE III 

Diotima's cave; dawn without. 

Agathon wakes. Diotima beside him 

DiOTIMA 

Canst thou interpret this? 

Agathon 

O prophetess, 
Thou knowest ; this rock was riven in twain, 
And over me the glistening purple deep, 
Sparkling with starry hosts, began to pale 
With morning, and the sleeping vales beneath 
Broke into thousand shadows, violet-winged, 
That in their motions died, and gleaming hills 
Unbosomed their fair slopes unto the east 
That molten burned ; then from that cloudless throne 
Light issued like a pillar of burning gold 
Sea-based ; and Phosphor in the rosy flush 
Folded the stars upon the hills of dawn. 



AGATHON 277 

New earth, new heavens ! Never land I saw 
That promised roving in such pastures sweet 
Since through the woods that front the sacred dawn 
I came, and music in my heart was born, 
And at my feet broke the deep sea of song. 
And One whose presence left the orient bare, 
Came ; of the image that my soul had stamped 
This was the living and god-motioned form. 

mortal speech, how truth disdaineth thee, 
The dark confuser ! Beautiful he stood — 
The feet that never wandered from the god, 
The eyes that yet remembered heavenly light; 
His form advanced still sang his joyful speed ; 
And in his hand I marked a laurel branch. 

1 was o'erawed, and darkly in that morn 
I felt the nearer hovering of his plumes; 
He struck me with the laurel, face and lips, 
And low upon my spirit borne I heard — 
Not silence, nor in words of mortal speech — 
" I am the angel of the god thou wouldest ; 
Love am I called, one name in heaven and earth ; 
And thee through me He chooses : Hft up thy heart 
High as His will whose hope abides in thee ; 
Know thou His mercy justifies His choice." 



278 AGATHON 

And sleep a thousandfold had sealed my eyes. 
Yet feel I on my cheeks the laurel burn. 

DiOTIMA 

The gods have been with thee : obey the gods ! 



Heart of Man 

BY 

GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 
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Old Cambridge 

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